The Sims is being destroyed by greed

The base game in all of The Sims major iterations provides only the basic tools of the game. Those are the sims themselves, the BB, and the CAS.All of the major resources are went on building the tools and foundations in order to have depth in between them. As far as we know The Sims 4 was supposed to be an online game, since EA thought online is the future. However, when SimCity has failed of being online, The Sims Studio that was under Maxis has to rebuilt the game to be offline for one year. Which results to the game causing the lack of content. However as the game releases patches was also released to provide depth in the game, and to make up for what happen. Now the base game has a huge change compared to what we had in 2014. If cars are ever going back to The Sims 4 I doubt it will be on a DLC.

This is my opinion regarding the topic :

Regarding to the DLC, while restaurants aren't in the base game like in Sims 3, almost all of the venues at the Late Night Expansion was on The Sims 4 base game. And imo I would rather pay for an actual restaurant management system rather than a rabbithole where I can't even see my sims there such as have the whole family eat together at the restaurant creating moments that I the player could see. Weather is also not basic. If it was, it should have been in the base game across all iterations. Since the budget of all major base games was dedicated to the tools, ai, life events, etc. Weather if added on the base game would be half-balked. Instead of adding them in the base game its better to see it in a fully fledged expansion rather than in the base game. I even doubt the holiday system would exist if it was on the base game since the Sims alone are already much much much more complex than weather. Bookstores and Groceries are something you can create with get to work, and in my opinion I would rather have them in that expansion pack rather than in the base game. In the last game they are just rabbitholes, compared to this iteration where not just you can visit it, but you can own it and even decorate your own books then sell them at your own bookstore. Its much better this way. For me as long as the content has depth and fun I can go with it.

For me the DLC enhance the game(Except Stuff Packs, they are just "accecories" sets of architecture styles). Even if you have all the DLC, you still do the things from the base game but with a twist. Major Life Events are in the Base Game for example, and packs only enhance them. Example is wedding, you can already have a perfect wedding, with a complete set of animations, goals, and even side activities. However with some DLC, it can be enhaced to be a greater experience, now you can plan weddings in advance, go on a retail botique to buy your sims their wedding gown, do the wedding on the venue full of fireworks, and the guest where animal costumes. With that in mind once the wedding happen, those animal costumed sims will clap their hands once the brrom and bride kiss and fireworks starts to rise from the ground. That alone is a major enhancement for me. I also like the sparse content. Quality>Quantity. For example We only get one small vampire pack instead of a Supernatural expansion, yet this game pack already puts Vampires in the previous iterations out of the water. We only got Cats and Dogs in an EP yet they feel more "pets for your sims" instead of just another sim in the household compared to the previous iterations, in which they are more deeper. We had an EP that only focuses on group Outings(aka Get Together) and that pack provides as the most in-depth, and sandbox grouping system on the franchise. Its no longer just a gouping system for your sim, but now it evolved to a system that the player could use to manipulate how NPC's will act on all of the worlds based on the players will. That is why I love them to have sparse content, as they add depth. Compare to EP's like late night while I love it, they took a quantity>quality route on that. The celebrity system is awful imo, the venues are always empty, and the vampires feels sims just with 5 or 6 new interactions. The only thing that is worth it there was the band.

Those are just my opinions regarding the topic. They also have an Engagement Team that works on free Content. They bring something game changing every year for free. They still haven't shown us what change they might bring into the game, so who knows what huge new content will be added. the last time they showed up, they gave as toddlers.