So you never tried to play a medieval neighborhood? Or a grungy one? In other words you like having EA decide what your town will look like? I assume all yours Sims like to do is party or something, because there's not much else to do in Sims 4. And even that's lame. No kareoke, no dartboards, no foozeball nothing to do but sit and watch the TV and drink.

Try taking those kids into the silly woods vacation thing. About all they can do is fish. Which they can do at home, so what's the point?

It's boooooring.

Not sure why on earth the ts4 neighborhood screen looks that way. Also, in my opinion the kids in ts4 all look the same with their pointy noses.

@enterprise24 And that, my fellow forum poster, is reason #1 why I REFUSE to buy the Sims 4. The neighborhoods in the Sims 2 bored me enough, thank you. The Sims 4 just seems like a juiced-up version of the Sims 2, in my opinion.

Here are some child sims in TS3. They are either made by me, or born in-game:



Even focusing only on the facial structure, not the hair and clothes, it's obvious you can make the children have varied and distinct features.
I always end up editing Sims; EA exaggerates their features, such as making the head and eyes too big, or their mouth very curved into a smile.

I played the sims 3 base game for a long time before needing expansion packs. There was a lot to be desired for children, teens, and elders (which was helped with generations) but i still had fun playing. i had fun making my neighborhoods look the way I wanted, I had fun watching my sims interact, I had fun with the day to day activities. I don't know if it's as full as ts2, but it's certainly more full than ts4.
I play ts3 and in family play, I'm always really excited to see what my kids will look like when they age into toddlers (considering sims 4 only has limited hair,skin, and eye colours, i can usually guess exactly what they'll look like) and i even get excited when they're kind of ugly. Sims 4 doesn't give me toddlers, but all of the kids look very similar. I've made sims of all races, most of the relationships in my game are interracial so the sims procreating look very different, but somehow their children all look similar at least until they age into teens. Then from teens to adults they look almost identical. Some people like that, but I really liked the change in ts3 between teens and adults, I never really knew what a sim was going to look like until they aged up fully.
Also, while I understand that some people prefer a closed world, isn't it obvious that it's a step backwards? If it's a backwards step that you favor, that's fine, but it is a backwards step. And pools, ghosts....stuff that was patched in....it WAS originally in ts3. Toddlers WERE in ts3. Babies that could be removed from the cradle WERE in ts3. You can like the sims 4 all you want but it IS bare in comparison.

@nitromon: well, he grew up decidedly not anime-ish, haha:



TS3 genetics are a weird thing. His mom and dad (blonde) were a bit more fantasy-ish

Funny, I was just thinking something similar the other day. Remember how when TS3 came out, alot of TS2 players complained? Basically wanted TS2 but with better graphics? Hey guess what - you got it. (I know, I know, I may be exaggerating a wee bit).

Haven't noticed any strange things. Only that one of my three children has a lighter version of brown hair than her mother and siblings. Like they mixed their father's blond hair with the dark brown hair of her mother.

That sounds good, will have to look out for hair color mutations in my game.
I meant that sometimes you can have amazing-looking Sims and end up with butt ugly offspring, or the other way around

Oh, just give it time. The family I've been playing has four daughters. One of them looks a lot like the dad and has the mother's hair and eye color. One has her dad's hair and eye color. The other two, one has blond hair and gray eyes and the little one I think has black hair. I can only really see from her eyebrows, though, since she's a very bald toddler and I wasn't inclined to change that. There is some fun randomness that pops up in their "genetics" but I kind of like it that way because it's almost like even those second-gen kids are expressing genes their parents could've carried, although black hair really wouldn't be a thing with parents where one has brown hair and the other has green. There is a mod that will eliminate the weird stuff so I figure if I get to the point where it no longer amuses me I'll add it to my game.

@Misty_2004, This is the mod you're referring to, yes?

@HarVee, yep, that would be the one. I also found there's one for pets by Chicken0895 over at SimsAslylum.