Critical thinking is using logic to evaluate whether something seems plausible or reasonable or true -- at least, that's how I normally see it used. If I'm understanding you correctly, you mean looking at something with a critical eye, or looking for fault. Bleh, I hope I'm not being pedantic. With all my rambling and grammar errors, I have no place to be :smiley:
You are right that on social media people often are more concerned about their side "winning" than anything else, but I don't really see that going on here. If Sims 4 were to release a patch which vastly improved the emotion system and gave actions consequences, if done well I'd be overjoyed.
I think a good example of this is toddlers. People were mad that there were no toddlers in the game, and people talked about it and were angry about it until toddlers were released. After they were released, it became a non-issue. People who wanted them were very, very happy now that they were in the game, and generally not looking to find fault with them. Now, there were people who didn't really want toddlers who were then annoyed, but given how well done the toddlers were and how easy they are to avoid, that faded quickly.
I don't think Sims 5 will be Freeplay 2.0 because, well, they have two mobile games already and they apparently do quite well but they have a huge market in the PC market as well which also is very, very profitable. They don't really gain anything by having another mobile game supplanting the more complex PC/console game. I have my own ideas about what Sims 5 may be like, but they're just guesses. I do think they will be releasing on console as well as pc which means it won't be released until the next generation of consoles, and if they're not a launch title, then they will wait for a couple of years for the consoles to get established. Or who knows -- maybe I'll be playing Sims 5 on a tablet, but I doubt it.