I don't know why people always get the impression that the sims was about total freedom and ts4 is suddently restricting players. Sure ts4 has more building limitations due to the foundation but the gameplay limitations were always there. It's a "video game" and there were always elements in every sims game that were restricted or forced you in a certain direction. The devs made it and at the end of the day it is their game and partly their vision of how certain things should work. They have that right. No game has "100% total freedom" infact ts4 has the most gameplay freedom of all the sims game. Ts3 forces a lot of things players might not want and that's normal for a game. the devs now try their best to take a lot into consideration so players have plenty of freedom. At the end of it all It's impossible to please everyone no matter what and there are limitations that can't be bypassed.
In terms of the world I don't think they are getting smaller and I've really been liking the worlds a lot lately. Glad they are moving away from the repeated suburbs which never fit any of my sims.
I believe at some point the devs confirmed that we will no longer get Windenburg size worlds with tons of lots because the game will go on for a long time and performance and everything has to be taken into consideration. Could also be budget as mentioned by logion.
I'm okay with the sizes we get and I think they are decent. I love to have a variety of world types so I would rather have a bunch of small ones with varying themes more than a few big ones. I almost never even play in Windenburg. I also like how they are trying to make the environments feel more interactive. I think if anything we are upgrading.
Has it been confirmed the lake is not swimmable? We get swimming lakes almost all the time now. It's no big deal if it's not. I would like it for my mermaid though.