Toddlers and Pools Not in the Sims 4

There will be no toddlers or pools included in the base version of The Sims 4, and people are pissed. How will we senselessly murder our creations now? The creators have offered the explanation that some things simply had to fall by the wayside to make room for new and improved features:

The bottom line is that when we sat down and looked at everything we wanted to do for this game, all the new tech we wanted to build into it, the fact was that there would be trade-offs, and these would disappoint some of our fans. Hard pill to swallow, believe me, but delivering on the vision set out for The Sims 4 required focus. Focus on revolutionizing the Sims themselves. So, rather than include toddlers, we chose to go deeper on the features that make Sims come alive: meaningful and often amusing emotions; more believable motion and interactions; more tools in Create A Sim, and more realistic (and sometimes weird!) Sim behavior. Instead of pools, we chose to develop key new features in Build Mode: direct manipulation, building a house room-by-room and being able to exchange your custom rooms easily, to make the immediate environment even more relatable and interactive for your Sim.

Here's hoping there are new ways to wreck the lives of Sims that make up for this tragic loss.