The Sims 5 is the perfect opportunity for the franchise to add a game mechanic that it already seems they've been building toward. Over two decades, The Sims has added plenty of features without changing the core gameplay of the franchise and as the popularity of The Sims doesn't seem like it will die off anytime soon, developers can continue looking toward the future and add a mechanic that perhaps should have been added years ago.
The Sims lets Sims explore various hobbies, such as gaming, cooking, gardening, and gathering items. Unfortunately, the gathering portion has been limited, usually to things like ingredients for cooking meals more cheaply; and The Sims has yet to build on this mechanic to make it a bigger part of the gameplay. The Sims 5 could develop the mechanic from merely things like planting seeds in The Sims 4 a step further by adding more uses like crafting to gathered and harvested items.
The Sims 5 Could Use A Better Crafting Mechanic
The Sims 4 has gathering mechanics, and such mechanics have appeared in previous main games as well, but there has yet to be a true crafting system in the franchise. An elaborate crafting system would make gathered items more useful, and it could lead to the inclusion of more active jobs like those added in the Get to Work expansion for The Sims 4. Plus, developers could give crafted items extra benefits or bonuses, such as increasing the rate at which a skill is learned for items that teach skills, like instruments for writing songs in The Sims 4.
Crafting Could Be Its Own Expansion For The Sims 5
Since adding a full feature tends to warrant an expansion for The Sims, adding a crafting mechanic could be no different. Expansions that added hobbies like gardening, fishing, and scavenging seem to be a good lead-in to a crafting system, and many games that include gathering likewise include crafting. Therefore, it wouldn't feel out of place for The Sims to add crafting, since the main games have already included items that can be gathered for years.
The Sims doesn't need to be a complicated game - and perhaps is better off keeping a measure of simplicity - but a crafting system doesn't have to be as detailed as those found in RPGs. Leaks of The Sims 5 haven't revealed too much information about how early in development the game is, but that means there's plenty of potential for content that can be added before release. Even if developers don't add crafting in the base game, they might want to consider adding it in an expansion for The Sims 5.
Source: The Sims/YouTube