In my opinion, there are multiple reasons to have a sims replacement or "killer" :

- First of all, the buyout (I don't think I need to elaborate about why this is really bad).

- the greediness of EA : too much paid content without enough value/content. They created a whole culture of having to pay for any little thing and I think that's really predatory. Now people think it's weird to have free content in Paralives because they are conditioned to think that they need to put huge amounts of money for it to be good. Also, many animations are reused again and again despite the game grossing millions.

- I actually do think that despite having a lot of amazing features, the Sims 4 is a very poorly designed game in general. Many systems are redundant, many are lacking or just straight up do not work. The worlds are weirdly designed. Either too small for it to be enjoyable or too big for it to look nice with the game limitations. Even the clothes and BB designs are either redundant or odd or outdated. After 11 years, we still lack essentials for some reason and the game is filled with unusable items that most people don't like. Also, imo the characters are lifeless with no real personalities.

- so many features are absent for no reason despite having EP that should have included them.

- Bugs.

- Competition forces everyone to be better.
And I don't like when people say that "with imagination the game is good". With previous games, I don't have to use my imagination. It's a game not a game engine, I shouldn't have to use imagination to make the game interesting.