There are plenty of players that are satisfied with the game as it is and as it is evolving. You're correct that the game has become terribly unbalanced with things that enable Sims to get too rich too fast. However, players complained that the events with Jasmine Holiday were too hard or too "intrusive" so they were abandoned. Players complained it was too hard to catch Angel Fish or get a Cowplant Berry. No worries, now you can just buy them along with crystals, minerals, and rare seeds. You can buy an almost complete collection of snowglobes, crystals, my sims dolls, frogs, and fossils from some random Sim that shows up in the community area outside of the Casbah or at the Flea Market. This is good for players that only want complete collections.
There's a vendor in Sulani that sells Angel Fish for bait during the fishing competition along with several other fish that used to be hard to catch. There's also a stall in Brindleton Bay that sells fish like salmon. Did you hear that players didn't like the StrangerVille Mystery aspiration? I'm surprised Maxis hasn't come out with an official way to complete it without having to do it. Mod creators did though. Did you hear that players didn't want Vampires in their games but they did want the build and buy stuff? Easy fix - nuke the appearance of Vampires. Those of us who bought Vampires to have Vampires are just SOL. You apparently can't have it both ways. But here, have some more Aliens.
The game is broken in many ways but not just because of being dumbed down with dust bunnies that make Sims get rich in a matter of hours. I didn't buy the vacuum cleaner pack so I don't have to deal with dust bunnies. I didn't buy Eco Living so I don't have to deal with NAPs or random phone calls from pre-made Sims that are foisted on us whether we want them or not.
Even though I try to run a fairly clean cc-free, mod-free game it's becoming increasingly impossible unless you can cope with things like the game forcing all types of fake relationships, Sages being placed in careers, Vlad showing up as not a Vampire but a Human, sometimes with no Vampire Lore skill, or the game makes him a bartender or yoga instructor instead of using any of the multitude of random townies that it generates with cheated skills in painting, violin, guitar, singing, comedy, programming, logic, or mischief. The game uses those gems to fill part-time freelance jobs, to become fixtures in your Sims neighborhoods, to attend every social event that your Sims are invited to, and to appear on every lot that your Sim visits. (AKA: Stalkers.)
Recently I noticed that plants had pretty much stopped disappearing after being planted. That was good to see but then I noticed that some harvestables were disappearing from my Sims personal inventories. Simple things like strawberries, snapdragons, lilies, and basil. Always the basil. I think I'm going to ban basil from my saves.
I don't think this game is meant to be a challenge unless the hardest choice you want to make is who's going to be the next baby daddy in a 100 baby challenge. I've pretty much become an observer in most new saves that I've started recently. I watch to see what the game does during the first week or two that a Sim is in play. The game is pretty consistent.
And there are the lots in Oasis Springs that have weird glitches where you can see the sky if you build too close to the boundary. Base game lots.
