After being incredibly disappointed by the release of Sims 4, I was someone holding out hope for Sims 5 that they would have realized, “Hey, people really didn't want us to do anything multiplayer in Sims 4. Maybe that means we should go back and make an actual good Sims game?” But instead, we get this awful news that Sims will be just like Fortnite, heavily monetized with its own store, basically following the model of Fallout games with creation club, in a sense. Completely the opposite of what players asked for, and crushing all of our hopes and dreams of playing a new Sims game that's just like Sims 3....
To me, this really kills the entire franchise for me. I don't think there's any hope for it, I think this is a death blow, basically an execution of the franchise and turning it into the most low value (to the consumer, mind you) dribble that they could have possibly came up with. There is nothing they could have announced that is worse than a multiplayer version of Sims with microtransactions, that's basically just Sims mobile that you can play on your PC! Sims 4 is already completely unplayable for me, because there's no content, it's just stupid packs and kids and stuff and little micro bundles. There's nothing fun about the game, and you see people streaming it, it's just building. That's all they are ever doing. Just building crap.
It's even worse that there's no competitor because it's so incredibly challenging to make a game like The Sims. Horrifically challenging, life by me was completely gutted and canceled, and that was one of the major games that people were looking forward to. There is still paralives, But they are so early access and have no release date at all. It could be 10 years from now that they finish their game or longer.
TL;DR: Sims 4 ruined by surprise multiplayer mechanics that were removed. Sims 5 canceled in place of multiplayer with microtransaction store like Fallout creation club. Barely any competitors, life by me canceled. Franchise is dead in the water
I disagree with you here. You're making it out to be that this is the extent of it, and that's not true. Sims 3 had a HUGE amount of content aside from Building. There were quests/tasks, lineages for families, hidden objectives, you could wander around your entire city/neighborhood. None of these are possible in Sims 4. Every "neighborhood" has like 5 housing plots. Some have more than that, one of the Vampire ones has literally 4 homes, you can't scroll over or have your sim walk next door and make a new friend nope. If you/others haven't played Sims 3, seriously... Go try it, try to 100% it by experiencing all it offers, especially the Future DLC. It's insane, really. Every S4 DLC by comparison is hollowed out and has like 5 things to do total. Most of the traveling ones, the university ones. They slashed the content in Sims 4 by 75% and kept the price for the DLC the EXACT same. It's criminal.
I'm not saying it's not possible that the Sims franchise has gotten worse. I'm just saying that lots of people would have described every Sims game in the same terms OP did. I'm also saying that your tastes and preferences can change over time. It's possible, but certainly not the only option, that these two things are more true than it is that Sims is getting worse.