It's funny because I loved the open world of TS3 at the time and hated it at first when it was taken away from us. But now I prefer the loading screens to the downsides of the open world.
I'm not even too fussed about having open neighbourhoods anymore - unless it is a community area. It would be nice to be able to designate an area as community and have that be open so that all shops and entertainment could be visited without loading screens but I cannot see a way for them to do that unless it was EA-designated districts.