One of the most frustrating things for me is the tone of the Sims 4 PR team. Patch notes are filled with lines of 'jokes' that try to mask the low levels of content. (They even acknowledged this in recent patch notes.) Then they include things in the patch that weren't even included in the notes, like the changes to how adults' and elders' faces look, or relationship culling. But the worst bit is how they pretend that there is no negative feedback for this game. When you go to the Sims Facebook page, the official page only responds to the positive comments. When Dine Out came out, my sister and I were surprised to see that all of the comments on the FB post were positive, since we had been disappointed by this pack's release. However, when you keep scrolling past the first several dozen comments, which all have responses from the page, you see the many, many comments expressing frustration with the pack, which have hundreds of Likes but are ignored by the official team.
From a marketing perspective, it may be easy to see why they make this choice of plastering positivity over all of their PR. But for the many Simmers who are frequently frustrated by this game, it creates a real feeling of disconnect between Maxis and the players. This is exacerbated by the fact that when content comes out with so many bugs, it feels like the developers did not even test play the game and are disconnected from the players' experience. In any other game it wouldn't be acceptable to release a game pack with so many bugs.
The overly peppy tone is so different from that of TS2. The obsessions with partying are also very different than the focal points of Sims 2. The ironing out of the offbeat sides of the Sims franchise began with TS3, but there was such a wealth of content in TS3 with the Store that you could really tailor your game to whatever offbeat flavour you wanted. When you look at games like TS2, the Urbz, Bustin' Out, and TS2 for GBA, it's hard to believe that TS4 is even the same franchise.
That being said, there are still many things I love about TS4 - like many people, it's CAS that keeps me coming back. There are actually plenty of things about Sims 4 that I do like (I personally really enjoy the emotions system, although it really ground my gears that they marketed it as the first time Sims had ever had emotions). But these feelings of frustration and disconnect are a real departure from my previous Sims experiences.
