IMO, Will Wright and Lucy Bradshaw are the single two most impactful and talented people who have worked on the Sims franchise. Both have long departed.
I'm not a fan of the leadership in charge of the Sims right now, including the VP of Franchise Creative, Lyndsay. In interviews, she's made it clear she has a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach to video game development.
(I'm referring here to the way she describes TS3 and TS4 base games in interviews; she's said things like "I didn't like this in the previous game, so I wanted to try out this." It's SO casual, as if making a tweak to the base game formula isn't going to have a cataclysmic effect on the entire generation of the game. It appears aimless to me.)
This helps contextualize the dramatic see-sawing of included features and design choices when you compare the base games of Sims 2, 3, and 4.
