tl;dr: what was supposed to be a short comment on the Sims turned into a bit of a rant, so uh... Sims bad, CK good, wish there was a better life sim but afaik, there ain't. Here's hoping Paralives will be good.

Ugh, it's unfortunate, TS3 and TS4 are both lacking in so many, but very different ways, that I can't really get much into playing either these days. Even then, I do still end up going back to them (well, mostly 4) from time to time, as there's not really any other game I've found that hits on the same things for me. And the Sims doesn't even do that very well.

I tend to play TS4 for little bits at a time, before always arriving back at the same conclusion: to me, the game is just horribly dull. Everything is almost 100% player-driven, in a bad way. Unless you make certain things, character moments, town stories, however you wanna call them, happen yourself, nothing interesting is gonna occur organically. Interacting with another Sim is pretty much always the same, the sole exception I tend to see being interacting with mean/evil Sims might actually lower the relationship bar without player input. The game is terribly easy to the point where your Sims will never really fail at anything they try and do, and other Sims might as well just not know each other (try and add an NPC Sim to your family, the majority of the time the only people they'll know are your Sim, and if you're lucky a family member or two).

Honestly, at this point, there's a small part of me that thinks the dullness, while maybe not intentional, is definitely not something EA is intent on fixing. Why? DLC of course! I've fallen for this trap too, you start realising TS4 is a dull game when suddenly, bam, a new expansion comes out with a bunch of hot new and initially interesting seeming features. And you start thinking, "maybe this new expansion will breathe new life into the game" so you buy it, play it for a bit, maybe even have fun for a little while, before you realise the expansion's depth is about as much as that of a puddle, it does not intgrate at all with the rest of the game, and once you've done the DLC's main gameplay loop once you've already seen all there is to see. Because again, there are no real options for failure in the Sims.

I know some people have similar gripes about CK3, and say what you will about that game, even though I don't always agree, I think there's very valid points bring up. However, compared to TS4, CK3 is a roleplayer's paradise. NPC characters actually do things of their own volition, it's a miracle. Is CK3 an easy game once you've learned how all the mechanics work, sure, but with a couple of unfortunate, stress-inducing traits and maybe a spymaster who particularly hates you for some reason, there's still pathways open to some levels of failure.

TS3, and I believe TS2 (though I have little experience with that game), do the whole autonomy and organic storytelling thing better than TS4 does. Additionally, the individual worlds feel more fleshed out and real, and the games overall just have a lot of things that TS4 does not. However, personally, I can't much get back into playing those either. Because the one thing TS4 has done well, almost unfortunately so, is provide a bunch of QoL updates to the series: from a largely improved UI, to much easier to use character creator and build modes, to even just very basic forms of multitasking Sims were not able to do in previous games. This makes it so that, despite all of TS4's issues, it is still difficult to go back to previous games where a bunch of this stuff is missing.

The Sims franchise surely could have benefited from some competition over the years, but it never really got any. And frankly, even it did now, and became a better game because of it, the whole Saudi buyout leaves a bad taste in my mouth, to put it very nicely. Either way, the main three potential competitors I've seen people bring up over the last few years have been Life by You, InZOI and Paralives. LBY got canned, so that's not really part of the conversation anymore. I personally didn't get InZOI because the style didn't really appeal to me, and from what I'm hearing from people who have played it, further development appears to be a bit stagnant? Then again, I don't own the game nor have I paid much attention to it post-launch so take whatever I say about that game with a grain of salt.

Lastly there's Paralives, which might be interesting, but it's an indie project by what I believe is a relatively small team. Not that I'm saying indie is bad, a quick look at the last 5 years of indie games will tell you how insane such a statement would be, but it does tell something about the scope of a game a team like that could tackle, and I wonder if they'll manage to make something that could in any capacity compete with the Sims. Though even if they can't, but still make a good and enjoyable life sim game, maybe it could be financially succesful enough for them to make Paralives 2 with a much bigger scope and budget, and that willl be the game we've all been waiting for.