The Sims 4 has something different for each player. Some build sprawling lots of clutter that looks like it was taken from a magazine. others have spent hundreds of hours in the same family building a legacy that spans generations.
One thing that unites all Sims players? Speculation. Over the past few years, The Sims has been releasing new content on a regular basis: one expansion pack, one stuff pack, and one game pack per year.
This month the Stuff Pack for 2021 was officially announced: Sims 4: Paranormal Stuff. It's full of ghosts, hauntings, and a career as a paranormal investigator, and the response from fans and influencers has been positive. But Paranormal Stuff is only the first in a series of addenda to the franchise that will land this year.
The community is already meeting on Reddit and on social media to discuss what else is on the horizon. Here at CNET we have some devoted Sims 4 fans who are excited to see what's to come. We hope to see the following in 2021.
Steph Panecasio
Associate EditorThe first thing my little Simmy heart wants is an overhaul of the education system. I want to berate school principals to get my kids back to private school. I want customizable uniforms. I want schools that offer different skills. I want an active, go to work style career where you run a daycare center and have tons of screaming toddlers all to learn how to use the potty. I want the mess! I live for it!
While we look at younger age groups, I'd love to see a return to the Sims 2 FreeTime-style hobbies where kids and teens can expand their skills during after-school activities. I want my baby ballet dancers to go to dance classes, my tech lovers to chess groups, and even as we move away from their skills, I want more reach for teenage jobs. Clubs are great but I don't always want these activities to be active, you know?
As for one more substantial change (expansion pack, I'm looking at you), I think the rallying cry of players who want an agriculture pack will culminate this year - and I'll add my voice to that. It never used to be something that suited my style of play, but I can safely say that farming (with chickens and goats!) Makes a lot of players very happy - and makes the challenges of Rags to Riches a lot more interesting. Also, it'll be a lot easier for me to create weird sim cults, but that's a story for another time.
The last thing that's a strange hope rather than an actual expectation: I'd love to see The Sims 4 have more interactions around death. Sure, there are myriad ways Sims can die, but while ghosts can hang around and destroy your gadgets, there is very little pomp and circumstance when a Sim dies. I want to see cemetery lot (it makes sense with vampires; there are precedents!) And the ability to hold an actual funeral. I'm just saying the Sims are a life simulator and part of life is death.
Shelby Brown
Employed authorThe Sims became such an escape for me in the first few months of the year Coronavirus pandemic. When I wasn't playing The Sims, I saw YouTubers playing the Sims - whether it was mass chaos, the 100 baby challenge (I think I got 65 babies), or breathtaking traits.
It may sound small, but I am missing some of the Sims 2 features - assuming this could just be nostalgia, as the Sims 2 era was real when I first got into the franchise. I would love to see the memory scrapbook feature come back. I think it would round out the Lifestyles and Sentiments feature that was recently added with Snowy Escape. One of my favorite worlds in The Sims 2 was Veronaville - especially the Montys and the Caps. The Sims 4 needs to bring back those deep narrations in the pre-made families as well as the ability to build deeper narrative into new family creations.
I love that Sims can live in Mount Komorebi in the Snowy Escape Expansion Pack, basically a vacation world. To find a home in Granite Falls? Yes, please!
Story-driven endeavors like the Strangerville mystery were fun, but there isn't much of a desire to replay it after you've "solved" the mystery. The Jungle Adventure pack was getting closer, but Star Wars: Journey to Batuu really showed the game's potential. The world was firmly, and there were so many ways your story could shake up just by which Sims you first encountered and what you asked them. A possible patch for the older games that open up the world - so you don't have to drive fast everywhere - would be so cool.
It's 2021 too ... we can finally get it Names for the debug items to make them easier to find?
A more farmer-friendly pack - even just one pack - would be fantastic. One of my favorite things to do in building is building rundown lots or finding them in the gallery and flipping them over. A pack of some broken, creepy items might also be of interest to simmers who love the supernatural packs.
Nicole Archer
Social media producerI'm a great builder when it comes to The Sims. Ever since I started playing it at the tender age of 9, I've loved planning all kinds of homes for my Sims: quaint farmhouses with cute barns (give us the Farming Pack, EA). Grand Gothic castles with creepy dungeons. Small squares; big squares!
For me, the Sims 4 build mode is the best build mode and gives players the greatest flexibility and creative control. However, I still think a couple of things are missing. The roof design in Sims 4 is difficult to master. There is no automatic roof function, so you will have to manually design and place the roof sections yourself. It's fussy and annoying and all the individual parts stay separate. There is no way to group the roof and resize it all at once. I miss the auto-roof feature from past Sims games - bring it back, I say!
Sims 3 World Adventures gave us the worlds of Shang Simla, Champs Les Sims, and Al Simhara - simple versions of China, France, and Egypt. There were great worlds with heaps to discover, such as crypts, collectibles and curses. We even have mummies! The Jungle Adventure and Snowy Escape packs are two of my favorite additions to Sims 4 - not just for gameplay, but also for the great additions to build and buy. But why stop in Japan and South America? Let's bring the whole world to our Sims. I also miss the Nectar Maker a lot.
I want more cultural diversity in build and buy mode. Except for the elements that you get in free updates and expansion packs, the elements and styles that you get to customize your world are pretty ... WASP-y. EA is great at giving us free updates on bringing more culture to the world: from the Day of the Dead update to Chinese New Year to hijabs and the wonderful Hispanic Heritage Month update last year. EA has shown that, given the latest update on skin tones, increasing Sims diversity is serious - but it just makes me hungry for more and can't wait to see what EA gives us next.
We need burglars again. I miss the sheer panic you feel when this funky music is playing and you see a weird sneaky thief sneak into the house and steal a few things. I miss the disappointment on the Theiven's faces when you think of installing a security alarm and they get caught. It's really the little things that matter.