Lack of Long-term gameplay in TS4
This video from Carl's Sims 4 guides explains the topic very well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk06dk_G8bI It is very true that there isn't really much to do with your money besides build a...
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The biggest problem is that TS4 has turned things that used to be long-term goals into short-term goals. Fulfilling aspirations now can be accomplished in 2 sim weeks or less, maxing a career is a total cakewalk, getting rich takes practically no effort. In addition, the rewards for fulfilling these goals are not much fun to play around with, either. Career rewards are mainly CAS and Build/Buy fluff which has little impact on the gameplay, and even occult powers aren't as much fun to earn and use as they could be because their effects on the world and sims around you are limited to being either helpful, benign, or a mild public nuisance.
All of this has resulted in a game where a save will be exciting early on, but has you feeling like "Well, now what?" rather quickly because everything falls into place too easy and the things you unlock do little to enhance gameplay long-term. Want to play an evil magic user who uses their power to cause direct harm to others? Not in TS4. Best you can do is go over to their house and set their stuff on fire in the hopes that you can indirectly kill them in the blaze. Burning or freezing or electrocuting someone to death? Nope. No soup for you. You get the ability to break into other sims' homes on the first level of vampire powers, but the fun runs out when you realize that it's not much use for anything beyond feeding on sims who are up in the middle of the night when you break in anyway and some minor mischief which doesn't even make the news channel or pop up in a notification when your sim goes to brows the internet.
They've added some mechanics where you can alter the physical world, which is cute. However, this game still doesn't have any mechanics that impact the social world meaningfully aside from the celebrity system. Heck, even clubs, a feature that I think is actually useful, don't move the social world much beyond the Infamous and Popular perks affecting starting relationship levels with newly-met sims. There are no grudges, having a bad relationship or being enemies with another sim doesn't affect autonomous interactions at all, good relationships aren't made difficult to maintain in the slightest unless you have a mean or evil sim who randomly insults and yells at their friends at weird moments in a conversation. Relationships are flavorless and have little development on a mechanical level, whether initiated by the player or automatic, and that definitely stifles the longevity of the game.
All of this has resulted in a game where a save will be exciting early on, but has you feeling like "Well, now what?" rather quickly because everything falls into place too easy and the things you unlock do little to enhance gameplay long-term. Want to play an evil magic user who uses their power to cause direct harm to others? Not in TS4. Best you can do is go over to their house and set their stuff on fire in the hopes that you can indirectly kill them in the blaze. Burning or freezing or electrocuting someone to death? Nope. No soup for you. You get the ability to break into other sims' homes on the first level of vampire powers, but the fun runs out when you realize that it's not much use for anything beyond feeding on sims who are up in the middle of the night when you break in anyway and some minor mischief which doesn't even make the news channel or pop up in a notification when your sim goes to brows the internet.
They've added some mechanics where you can alter the physical world, which is cute. However, this game still doesn't have any mechanics that impact the social world meaningfully aside from the celebrity system. Heck, even clubs, a feature that I think is actually useful, don't move the social world much beyond the Infamous and Popular perks affecting starting relationship levels with newly-met sims. There are no grudges, having a bad relationship or being enemies with another sim doesn't affect autonomous interactions at all, good relationships aren't made difficult to maintain in the slightest unless you have a mean or evil sim who randomly insults and yells at their friends at weird moments in a conversation. Relationships are flavorless and have little development on a mechanical level, whether initiated by the player or automatic, and that definitely stifles the longevity of the game.
