This one is hard because you have been given control of a sim and told to shape their life in a way you see fit. Telling them to find their own love interests, gives up some of that.
You also have to remember that just because you tell a sim to hit on another, doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a perfect fit.
Their lifestyle or traits may conflict with your sims. Ie your sims is ambitious, good, clean freak and the sim you want them to be with is lazy, mean and a slob. It will definitely affect the amount of negative moodlets your sim has and putting those 2 together in marriage and the same household may result in the Grim Reaper visiting your lot sooner than expected.
I think this is why like in real life, you are supposed to have your sim question and feel the other out per say. Ask questions about what they find attractive. Have general conversations and see if their interests or love of life match or disagree with yours. Also, sims do have features others like and don't like. Yes, you can put 2 together, but do you really want a sim relationship with a life partner that only finds your sim "ordinary or plain looking" VS "very attractive" ?
I also feel there are some background mechanics going on that players may know and not know about when it comes to sim attraction and interest of each other. I took 4 custom sims (2 male / 2 female) with similar traits. Put them in a big room together with a few items like bed, tv, workout machine, darts ect, deleted the door and just let the game roll for a few sim days. Despite both males and females viewing the other as very attractive, Interestingly enough, 1 couple really hit it off well. There interaction with each other felt very fluent, likable and warm. The other 2... well.. they didn't seem to care if the other existed. Other then the you should eat or go to bed commands along with the initial love command, I didn't really interfere otherwise.
If your talking about NPC and their freedom to choose other sims... well .. I kinda had to neuter Vladislaus Straud. Despite having a wife and child, when I went through his family tree I noticed he had babies with 7 or 8 other women. This explained the sudden influx of random sims coming up to mine growling at them. A lot of sun + oops, forgot to open your umbrella cleaned up that mess, but was still shocked on how busy Mr Straud had been.
For game to game comparisons, will Paralives be the end of Sims? Until the game actually comes out, thats a hard judgment call. Remember, games like World of Warcraft have been around for years. Had bad ... i mean really bad expansions. Ones that should of ended the franchise. Then you have games that were introduced as WOW killers. GW2, Warhammer, LOTR ect that didn't live up to half the hype they were presented as and clearly did not end WOW. Not saying they didn't grow their own fan base, but as you can see with WOW just releasing Shadowlands and millions still playing since 2004, continued monthly subs and a large fanbase, WOW will end with Blizzard/ Activision deciding it will, not the other way around. Yes, WOW does not hold the fanbase it did years ago, but clearly enough to keep things rolling.
To play the other side however, I will gladly play Cities Skyline over Simcity any day. (sorry to anyone that may offend)
So lets hope EA can update, modernize, continue being creative, fix bugs in a timely matter, see what competition brings to the table and introduce to Sims, so it can be around for many more years because, I really like playing it.
