It's all perspective and an objective opinion. For me, the sims 3 never felt "meaty" at all. I didn't bother with it til 2012 because I enjoyed 2 enough. So I bought 3, and more content, and every time I bought something for it I was let down again and again and wondered when it was going to get as good as 2. It never did. Not one pack brought it up to Sims 2 level.
Sims 4 is not the best yet. It's got work to do to surpass 2 and that means it needs to work on the sims themselves and the background dynamics of said sims to make them as individual as the way we create them. Their interpersonal relationships need some work.
But 4 is better than 3 from my perspective for many reasons.
1. The diversity of sim CAS and creating absolutely unique sims.
2. The ease of build mode and what they've added to that in terms of just pulling walls and moving things.
3. The animations are far better and while the sims are much the same as their sims 3 counterparts in terms of how they play out or act, they aren't near as robotic looking.
4. The content they give is more in depth. We finally get to go back inside restaurants (I hated the rabbit holes) and Vampires are amazing in this iteration. Apparently so are toddlers, but I don't play them enough to comment on that. The club system in 4 is superior. The holiday system in 4 is superior. There is a lot more in 4 than 3.
I hope they keep adding content, and I hope beyond hope that they have heard the feedback regarding the sims, the faulty emotion system, the faulty memory system, and that they are working on that first and foremost.