Hey there,
old member here who has decided to jump pack into the Sims games. I've left the community and gave up the games years ago before the Sims 4 launch and from what I've heard it wasn't a big success like the Sims 3 was.
I've played the Sims 4 ONCE on the day it launched and after that never again. Not even a second time after. It was buggy and lacking to the point of me finding it completely not enjoyable.

So it's been a while since it's release now and I've been thinking about giving it a second chance in case it has improved ( either by expansions or whatever else).

So how does it compare to the Sims 3 right now? Seasons out yet? Pets? Toddlers and pools? I know that's a lot of questions but that would help me a great deal to decide to either stick to Sims 3 or jump onto Sims 4. And if anyone has been making CC for it and could give me a short insight into the state of creating tools and tutorials available id be very thankful.

Happy Simming

It's still pretty buggy.

This is a link to the current expansions, game packs and stuff packs that have been released. You can peruse yourself to find out if they additions are worth it.

As for your other questions...

There are toddlers and pools. Not pets yet or seasons, though people seem confident we will get pets. People are less certain about seasons. There's a family pack coming in May/June, and it seems like it might be TS3 Generations-lite. There are vampires, but you have to shell out $20 for the expansion pack. There's a pretty decent amount of CC out for TS4. I'm not going to do an exhaustive list. Going to tumblr and typing in "s4cc" -- or places like Sims 4 Updates -- should provide you with a good idea of what's out there.

Honestly, if my laptop ran TS3 smoothly with decent graphics, I wouldn't be bothering much with TS4, but I'm sure other people will have different thoughts.

Thank you agent_99, seems like the Sims 4 is much better than it was but it still missing few key elements that are important to me and the way I like to play. I see there's no colour weheel still, only recolours of things and that restricts me a lot on the way I like to build houses and create Sims.

For once it's nice to see expansions that aren't as overpriced as they used to be for Sims 3, although some of the Sims 4 ones released so far are completely irrelevant to me. Seasons is probably my most favourite one and it's not yet out.

As for CC, I'm disappointed that all of it relies on recolours as it used to be in Sims 2.

I've seen videos of the toddlers - they're so cute! I think they're probably worth the wait. Besides, the toddlers have loads of new interactions like hitting, 'go away' and stuff like that, and new skills to learn. Pretty awesome.

It's slowly catching up to The Sims 3 as far as performance goes. Not even remotely close to catching up content-wise though.

TS4 DOES have it moments. Sadly, they're only moments. After those 9 sim days, enjoy your bland children and your younger young adults with less content.

The devs are saying that it's doing great, that sales are up (from a suspiciously unspecified amount) and that 1.5 million people showed up to the inauguration. So don't get too excited about it, or about it's theoretical future in which everything ends up being satisfactory. But don't worry, we're still getting the crippling lag from last time.

I just might fire up my old base game and patch it up to see how well that goes before jumping into any of the expansion packs. Everyone's replies have been very helpful.

Remember: always expect to be disappointed. That way you won't be left with a bad feeling.