I'm going to put it out there that I play and enjoy both sims 2 and sims 4. Sims 4 has it's faults yes, but for the most part I am still entertained playing it. Sims 2 is my favorite sims version, and sims 1 makin magic is still my favorite expansion pack. Just thought I would give you all a small inside as to where I am coming from.
Life By You to me after seeing all the trailers and information thus far seems like it would a dream come true for those who want to create worlds, build buildings, and mod to your hearts content. For me though I want a people simulator, and the people (not talking about graphics) don't seem to have much life to them. The conversations are going to be limited, telling me that I have to add more to the conversation trees myself just makes me think it will be very limited on social interactions and the ones it does have really get boring because they repeat constantly.
For me sims is also very much a story maker, and while Life By You talks about how you can make your own stories it doesn't actually show that. Customization is great, however, that to me doesn't necessairly make a game story friendly. I am also someone who likes families which Life By You hasn't even discussed it other then they will only have adult people in the early release.
Life By You seems to be really really really focused on the open world and spending hours changing that world. Some people love that and that's fine. I only get two or three hours a night of me time, and to me that's not game play, that's just making it so I can't play the people part. Also open world as it worked in sims 3 had so many issues that were caused by the open world part. I remember having to chase down townies who got stuck and having to reset them, if I didn't it would cause lag in the game. I remember getting fired from jobs because a townie/townies would be at the door of the job and my sim couldn't get to into the building. I remember not being able to do certain jobs because buildings closed at certain times and I wanted to do more then just work and stay home. Sims 3 open world also made it really difficult for to be a rotating player, and to play out those types of stories.
Finally Rod Humble said more then once during sims 3 how much he dislikes supernatural, he was very hesitite on adding any to sims 3. It's why they ended up in one expansion pack, and that of course caused them not to be all that fleshed out. Most likely there will be zero whimsy, supernatural and so forth in Life By You. I enjoy more of a parady of people simulator then 100% realistic people simulator. Sims tends to go more of the parody part, Life By You seems to be going more towards the 100% realistic part.
Now of course if you like the looks of Life By You that's fine, just like it's fine that so far I haven't seen anything that makes me excited to play the people.
