For people with 1000+ hours on TS4 -- What keeps you playing?

There is always something for me to do. I'm a huge story teller, so there is always some way I can continue the story. If I'm not feeling a certain storyline, I head in to CAS and start something new. There's no limit. It doesn't matter what time of day, it's not multi player, etc

For me, it's all been about CAS 80% of the time; I just find some solace in creating Sims, and challenging myself to make newer and better Sims and try putting on things for them I haven't used often. I can visualise their character this way, and then I let them wander off in the worlds as I plop them down and play naturally, which usually ends with me enjoying the background while playing half the time. It tends to be relaxing, bugs notwithstanding.

I have to check how many hours I've played, but I'm sure it's a lot. I often take breaks for a couple of months but I know I will always be a simmer. I've been a simmer since TS1 and even if future iterations really disappoint me I think I will still play TS3 and TS4 once in a while. Playing the game is so relaxing to me. I'm genuinely happy when I play it and it is a great break from RL stress. So far there hasn't been any other game that allows me to explore my creativity as much as The sims does. I just love creating characters, creating their world and developing their storylines. I also enjoy that new packs are added often, and that is usually what motivates me to come back after a break.

4262 hours is what it says for me. No clue how much of that is playing, pausing ect. I know I even play offline sometimes so whoops.. I really don't know how much time it's been but I know it's been a lot.
All sorts of things keep me interested. I play different ways from get ahead and play nice to deviant play. Sometimes I try self challenges. Sometimes I want to see what the new packs bring and just focus on that for awhile. Sometimes I go on mod binges just to see what they do in the game then I pull them out and play vanilla. I tell stories to myself as I play and structure out their lives to make stories. I love going in CAS when inspired to recreate maybe the cast from a tv show or movie or redo all the Sims 2 characters and worlds I loved and give them new or updated stories and housing. There's just a lot of ways to play from intense and focused to casual and light.
My desire to play can be cyclic also. I take breaks if there is no draw for awhile. Then it comes back strong.

I have been obsessed with the game ever since it came out and I love creating characters and making up stories for them <3 I will never, ever stop playing The Sims :)

I love to tell stories and to build community structures and faiths etc beyond the game itself, micro and macro. So, I spend lots more time on the game than the hours actually played. Love te planning aspects, seeing local laws, community mechanics, and not the least to find those single sims who affect my way of dealing with it all. So, guess it's the sandbox aspects. Benn with TS since 2001 (?), and had problems getting into TS4 as much as I did with previous series, but now it feels like Seasons fixed it all :)

Whilst I only have 773 hours on my Origin, I can tell you that has risen a lot just over the past month or so...

Back in 2014 when the game first came out, my laptop (Dell Inspiron) was only about a year old. I played the game and whilst it ran alright, it wasn't perfect. I couldn't play on the highest graphic setting, which for some reason is a make or break situation for me. I can't stand looking at ugly textures and jagged edges whilst playing, therefore I kinda gave up with it. I revisited it again in 2015 when I realised my laptop had interchangeable graphics and I had played on the less powerful one. I played a lot more as it looked nicer and was less laggy. I worked abroad for the majority of the year in 2016 and didn't take my laptop so I missed out then. For the most of 2017 and the first half of 2018, I continued to play but my laptop was gradually ageing and eventually I was getting lag and a notification that said the hard drive was failing.

So it was time to get a new laptop... and I managed to get an ASUS Strix with a heavy discount at the end of May and the game runs like an absolute dream. I can play on Ultra and it's so smooth and I have every pack installed.

I think what keeps me coming back is there is always something new to explore and discover. I have never really been one for doing rotational play, but it is something that I am beginning to delve into. I've also never really downloaded from the Gallery but I saw some amazing housebuilds on YouTube yesterday and I will definitely be downloading some of those later on. Seasons has been out for month and there's still things that I haven't explored yet, such as gardening and I have never been Ice Skating yet! I have also never really owned a cat or explored many of the features from Cats and Dogs, so there is still a lot left to do...

I have 4188 hours played.. can't really say what keeps me playing besides just liking the game. If I didn't like it then I wouldn't play it.

I will go for periods without playing it at all though. I stopped playing around the time Cats and Dogs came out and only started playing again when Seasons was announced. That's been the case with me since I first started playing The Sims (around 2003). In fact, I stopped playing The Sims entirely in 2008 and didn't start playing again until around 2012, 3 years after TS3 was released.

I'd love to know how much time I spent on TS2 because I seriously loved that game. Haven't played it for 10 years. :'(

Wow -- so many great responses!
What kept me going for a long time were challenges -- ones I designed, and ones other people have designed. But I'm not great at min-maxing and micro-managing. I want my Sims to be happy, and that means making sure they have regular meals and get plenty of sleep, etc.
When TS4 first came out, I was delighted to see that I could play more than one family again. I also discovered the ISBI Challenge -- playing just one Sim in a household. But it's only recently that I've put the two together.
Currently I have 10 families going. I can only control 1 Sim in each of the 10 households, except on all-household days, which my Sims earn by working on skills, getting promotions, making friends, etc. Since Seasons came out, I've been putting in 2-3 hours a day on my game, probably more because I write about them, too.

I can really relate to some of the things that other people have written. Yes, @luthienrising, it is the constant discovery and exploration. I'm like @Holiday in that my Sims haven't been ice-skating yet. Yesterday was the first time they got to make snowpals. And I still haven't tried running a vet clinic like @simgirl1010, but most of my 10 families have a pet. And I agree with @OEII1001 that Seasons has really boosted the fun level. When one of my toddlers dressed in his snowsuit and went outside to play in the snow autonomously, it was a moment of pure joy.

I've played a ridiculous number of hours in this game (over 3k, I'm pretty sure) and here are some, but not all of the reasons:

The managed households/manage worlds function - which is probably the most underrated feature in the Sims 4. I love how easy it is to edit, delete, add, change, ect both townies, npcs and played families. Pulling a lot off of the gallery is super easy and so is plopping lots around, moving them around, editing them, etc... It was so clunky in previous games, and now it's easy and fluid, and as a rotational player who likes to play neighborhood wide this is a huge, huge thing.

CAS - It's just so easy to make interesting looking sims now. It's lightyears ahead of the previous games. There is really no comparison.

Art Style - I think this game (especially using reshade) is freaking gorgeous.

Animations - the sims themselves and their facial expressions are so much better than previous games. I used to play the Sims 1, 2 and 3 from the top down or zoomed out from This time around I find myself playing and watching much closer because the sims are so expressive. It's great.

Build mode - I'm a terrible builder, but even I can make nice looking houses in this game. It's so much more intuitive and easy now, especially with the dragging functions. And I love how I can just pick up a house and flip it around or move it three tiles to the left without having to tear everything down now.

Game performance - I have a ridiculous amount of mods and cc crammed into this game and yet it only takes a couple minutes to load and a few seconds between lots. It's so smooth and reliable that I really think the team doesn't get enough credit for all of the work under the hood they must have done to get this game to run so well. Don't have to worry nearly as much about file corruption, game breaking lag, routing issues, and completely broken expansion packs etc. The Sims 3 was a freaking nightmare for me, and so I really love how this game runs.

Custom Content - there is an amazing amount of CC and mods for this game that are really, really great. I mean, I've been tossing cc into my games since the Sims 1. New cc always helps keep things fresh.