Hell, the only features I knew of are the absence of Swimming pools, and click and drag editor instead of sliders.
I have a feeling this is turning into Spore. Ie, Fantastic Editor, but they kind of forgot the game.
I heard that there apparently is no Sims 3-style open world or pattern editor in the CAS preview by Lazy Game Reviewer. Hype level: negative five.
That's just for starters. I mean, I understand that they tend to drop back quite a bit whenever they start off a new game because of the whole "build a new engine" thing, but
Mod The Sims and
NeoGaf lists, well...a top-ten stand-out list to me.
1. No toddlers - the available life states are baby, child, teenager, adult, elder.
2. Babies are not an active life state; as in Sims 1, they're essentially objects.
3. Swimming is gone. Pools are gone. Swimwear is gone.
4. Lot height reduced to 3 instead of 5 stories. Lot size reduced from 64x64 to 50x50.
5. Terrain sculpting appears to be gone
6. Rabbitholes are gone (yay)...because community lots have been sharply reduced as part of the loss of the open world (not yay).
7. So many careers are gone, and the ones that remain seem to be a bit...odd.
8. Lot limits have sharply reduced (25 per world - 5 per neighborhood for 5 neighborhoods per world). World and terrain editing are effectively gone.
9. Basements gone, foundations are now global to the lot instead of placed.
10. Service sims greatly reduced/gone - police officers, babysitters, repairmen, firefighters, and burglars.