I think when it all comes down to it, we see the past with rose colored glasses. The Sims 3 was awesome for the time. But the fact is, for many many players, it ran like a big pile of rock... There were tons of bugs with it too. The Sims 4 is a completely different game with the same theme. Each version of The Sims has been completely different from the last only sharing the theme of 'life simulator'. I'm not saying that the Sims 3 was a bad game. I loved it then and still do today. But it wasn't perfect and it wasn't necessarily the best one for everyone.
Sims 3
Pros: was an adventure made, in my opinion, for exploring. The Color wheel was awesome, the vast quantity of worlds and content amazing...cars and transportation of all kinds and a whole lot of flavor in all the little easter eggs and sim story progression there.
Cons: Because of the color wheel, creating your own recolors or custom content was a lot more difficult to do. If that was your thing, the learning curve was steeper.
Sims 4
Pros: Sims 4 is another thing entirely. It has awesome drag and drop mechanics for building, cool push and pull mechanics in CAS, multi tasking, and a vibrant, crisp world to live in. The life states and stages are more involved in that there are tasks to complete, and in the case of the life states, skills to be maxed. Multi tasking ...it can't be, in my opinion overstated. Its great. My sim can actually eat, play, work, etc... and actually carry on a conversation with their families at the same time. There just isn't enough time in the day to work then chat then eat, then chat...etc... Creating recolors and custom content is a lot easier. All you need is a paint program and some imagination.
Cons: No cars, No color wheel, Less content, no easter eggs to find (I miss the little bits of humor and information you could find once upon a time)
TlDr: Both games are great for their own reasons and I think Sims 4 has a lot more to offer than just pretty graphics. I'll continue to play both for a long time to come.
