I never joined, though I did visit a few times for mod update info, but it's a shame the Sims forum was shut down. The long-time players, especially those still with the older editions, are not all the youngest and I can't see them loving the Reddit style EA forum. I think there were established story threads full of images too, and those are unsuited to forums without pages. It seemed like they had a nice community going, for those who like that kind of comradery, which is rare for games these days. I assume it's a shitshow in progress with a lot of disappointed people and attempts to rebuild elsewhere. Good luck with that. Also have to assume this points to EA taking the Sims series 100% in-house and Maxis going bye-bye.
I don't talk about Sims much - it's kinda my secret guilty pleasure - but I still play Sims 4. OK, I play a modded game (some downloaded, some mine, some downloaded then altered by me) that somewhat resembles Sims 4 but is full of drug dealing gangster fairies who run sex clubs while evading a zombie race car driver on a unicorn, his flamethrower carrying ballet dancer sidekick, and a tiefling Jedi who lost his mind and became a serial poisoner. I don't really do whatever it is a player is supposed to do with the game but some of my fairies wear cute dresses! Generally though, my Sims are ugly, degenerate goofy little beasts who spawn chaos and so are their kids.
But really, between CAS and Buildbuy CC and a bazillion (often) script mods my Mod folder is over 80GB. I have no idea what a vanilla Sims game (3 or 4) plays like. I'd probably hate it.
I go hard with my modding. I'm a bit of a nutter about it. Deffo OCD with the mods.
Sims is my timesink. It's what I do when I'm stressed. I've played since I was a kid. Months will pass without thinking of it, but it's there if I need it. I'm in the middle of testing, replacing, and altering everything in my mod folder for DX11. I finally stopped forcing the game to DX9 and it has been ugly. I use hundreds of sliders, including for height, along with a ton of fantasy and scifi CC cosmetic additions like full body Batuu skins, wings, antennae, fins, scars, etc so it's a bitch checking and changing it all. Anything downloaded is opened up in Sims4Studio, age and catergory edited (I have all the CAS categories unlocked for all ages so make loads of use of Occult details and body markings for stuff like horns) and all that. Same with buildbuy CC; it's all opened and changed, textures added, deleted or altered. I rewrite a lot of downloaded mods to fit how I want them to work or update them to the latest patch. It's a job, I tell ya!
Oh, and since I saw a bit of discussion about it, I'm interested in InZOI. Sort of. The graphics are attractive but I want more freedom to get ridiculous than I expect that game to offer. I'm not so much interested in pretty characters but interesting, funny looking ones and that's easier to achieve with less photorealistic art styles. I don't want to simulate life so much as I want to create a murderous child leading a band of rampaging killer ducks crashing the prom to avenge her gangly trans sister not being voted prom queen. I don't think InZOI's gonna give me that or familiar and comfy enough code to try making it possible, whereas Sims ... it's a maybe if I really want to dig in and modify existing mods to fit my dreams.
