Eh, I love it. I'm sympathetic though to anyone who doesn't. I'm just not sure what it's being compared to. TS3 Island Paradise was my favourite, and that thing was basically unplayable. You had to mod the heck out of it, delete a bunch of stuff like house boats and hotels, several families... and then maybe you could play without crashing. I did love diving but that also was eventually explored through. I've explored every dive spot to death, the mermaids had so few interactions. The hunger bar for the kids was messed up.
Eventually all of the content in every pack will be "explored through". To me, the beauty of the sims is how you can play the same career on the same world but with a different personality and sim, and you have a whole different game, or vice versa. It's about recombining. I just don't think it's possible to make a pack with content that "never ends". The replayability of it is based on something else.
TS3 definitely feels more "full" at this point, but it's also had a full run of expansions. TS4 is still going, and is just gonna keep adding more. It's also why I didn't buy it at launch, but only got into it a few months ago. That's always how I've done sims, I don't buy the latest until it has a lot of expansions under its belt. When sims 5 rolls around, I'll do the same thing. It's always gonna feel like a bare-bones game in the beginning when compared to years of expansions. I'm also one of the rare few that like the world system on TS4 better than the open world in TS3. It's just way more playable for me. I don't miss TS3 now and just uninstalled it on my computer. Even with less expansion packs, TS4 is at a place where it outshines TS3 for me. There are definitely things here and there that I'd like to see. I wish we had house boats for example, and controllable pets, but I also find the list of "pros" for me personally with TS4 vastly outweighs the cons and few things that I miss from TS3. And, again, even those things I miss I know would eventually be "old hat" anyway. Dive spots will be explored through, house boats will just sit on the water.
But everyone plays their own way! For those of you disappointed, I'm sorry. I hope that you can find other games to enjoy and not waste anymore money on things in TS4 that will disappoint you. Here's hoping that when The Sims 5 eventually comes out, it better suits all of our needs.
