Picture it: a Sim pays a love guru/matchmaker the bare minimum to set him up on a date. Out of nowhere comes someone he's not at all interested in, they have nothing in common, and can hardly make it through a date. The Sim then pays the matchmaker a huge hunk of money and from the sky falls... the Sims I'd made for him, who he'd never met, and I was saving to be his true love. It was beautiful!
You could play the same story over and over, but it would turn out radically different based on the Sims involved. It was a self-guided adventure. It was all the quirkiest parts of life! I considered myself their merciful god, and them my people, rather than an ant farm that I have to drop food into now and then.
This is what I'm missing. The ability to have the storyline go differently because the Sims' personalities are different. Each Sim was an individual, and I got quite attached to some of them. I was interested in a legacy to see the family grow and change over time, not for the numbers.
This isn't playing with life, and they're not so smart it's scary. This isn't an interactive story-based sandbox game, it's a way to set up photos for your blog and make up a story around the pictures.
