Lifetime Aspirations
One of my main problems with Sims 4 is how the Aspirations work. Rather than being lifetime commitments like previous games, they’re more like extended tutorials. At last for me, this resulted in shallow and one-minded gameplay. I also wanted Aspirations to be more challenging, it should not be a guarantee that every Sim completes their Lifetime Aspiration IMO. They’re supposed to require some hard work, and maybe even a little luck.
So I set out to fix it! This mod reworks Aspirations to get rid of their multiple levels/goals. Instead, they now have only one goal. They also all reward the same amount of satisfaction points (5,000). The result is a game which doesn’t just encourage following a single path, and makes Sims feel more individual. It also encourages exploring different areas of the game. I don’t think I’ve played certain careers or done certain activities ever just because they weren’t tied to an Aspiration, and this mod helps alleviate that issue.
My Sims used to be nothing more than digital Satisfaction Point slaves, but not anymore!
WHAT THIS MOD DOES
- Revamps all Aspirations (except Star Wars ones) to be a single, more difficult, objective.
- All revamped Aspirations reward 5000 Satisfaction Points.
- Moves the Jungle Explorer Aspiration to the “Locations” category and hides the “Star Wars” category until the player visits Batuu.
DISCLAIMERS:
- I’ve done my best to set each Aspiration goal so that it will take til the late Adult/Elder life stage to complete in normal gameplay (aka not just spamming interactions), but I can’t really verify this without playing through every single one individually. Frankly, I don’t have the time to do this right now, so I will very likely be tweaking the goals based on feedback and as I gradually work through each one.
- Think of this a sort of early access release for now.
- Since these Aspirations don’t reward satisfaction points until they are completed, and under normal circumstances it should only be realistically possible to complete 1 or 2 Aspirations in a lifetime, I would recommend playing with Whims enabled to ensure a steady stream of satisfaction points.
FUTURE PLANS:
- Continue to adjust goals (and rewards?) for ideal gameplay balance.
- Introduce a new “Occult” category, and move all Vampires/Realm of Magic Aspirations there to help free up space in other categories.
- I’m working on brand new Aspirations to help round out often-ignored sections of the game. I have 26 planned so far, but I would really love to hear everyone’s ideas and suggestions!!! If anyone has tips on creating my own gold icons as well, I could use some help there! My attempts so far are decent, but don’t match the look as much as I’d like.
PROGRAMS USED:
I ended up doing almost all of the work by hand-editing XML files, but Zerub’s Mod Constructor V4 was very helpful in figuring things out. And, of course, Sims 4 Studio.
