1. Weather in the Base Game: Even if seasons are still an expansion, basic rainy, sunny, and cloudy weather in the base should be in.
2. Base Game Supernaturals: Make a magic skill (a skill this time, not a non-mixable lifestate), aliens,ghosts, werewolves, and vampires unlockable through player-initiated actions in the base game. You know, like in TS2, where you wouldn't get abducted by aliens unless you used the fancy telescope. For unleashing magical beings, there would be something where you break an ancient seal for each one to activate them in your game, and the magic skill would be unlocked by deciding to try out a spell from some ancient tome. More supernatural stuff could be added later (with the packs all involving unlocking their respective creatures or keeping them locked and just using the Build/Buy stuff...because there are people who want that...for some reason...).
3. No Limits on Child Activities: If you want your Child sim to learn how to cook, they should be able to learn from the T.V., books, the computer, and cooking together with a grown-up or Teen sibling. If you want your Child to play the guitar, they should be able to play the guitar. If you want you Child to paint on an easel instead of using the craft table, they should be able to paint on an easel. If you want your Child to start learning programing, they should be able to start learning programing. Separating Children from Teens and Adults by the things they CAN'T do is a boring way to differentiate them. Separating Children from older sims with special interactions like playing Tag or Cops and Robbers and with unique animations and AI tuning is a much better and more fun way to do it.
3. Make Babies DO STUFF: On the subject of making lifestages more fun, if Babies are going to be freed from the crib once more, make them actually do stuff in the game...you know, besides crying, sleeping, and squirming. Have them crawl around on the floor when you set them down. Have them put stuff in their mouths all the time. Have them be able to learn how to sit up and scoot themselves along the floor on their little bums. Have them show different levels of fussiness, cheerfulness, clinginess, and independence. Have them react differently to different sims depending on their relationship levels. Have them do the comedy pee jet thing sometimes when they're getting their diapers changed. You know, make them interesting to watch and play with instead of just being dollbabies that are nice to look at and not much else.
4. All the Controls!: I want to be able to set the overall lifespan of my sims, the length of each life stage to the day, what the game can and cannot do with and to my sims while I'm off playing another household, the starting funds for each household as I make them, whether or not I want starting skills for each sim and what those skills will be and what the levels of those skills will be, relationship decay rates, autonomy levels, full manual control over deleting or maintaining relationships in the relationship panel...ALL THE CONTROLS!! There can be pre-sets for easy set-up and ease-of-use for those who are new to the franchise or aren't as concerned with those sorts of things, but there should also be in-depth controls for more advanced players too.
5. A Better Fight System: First, let the cartoon fight cloud be optional. Next, let's get a Fighting skill, with different animations for the sims depending on their individual level of skill. Speaking of animations, if the fight cloud is off, I'd like to see more dynamic fight animations, like an action/martial arts movie...because that would be dope as heck.
That's my top 5.
