Mussfis Better Soul Goals

!UPDATE: still working on version 1.128

Better Soul Goals completely reworks how "Life & Death" chooses Bucket List / Unfinished Business goals. Instead of letting EA's broad random weighting decide first and merely nudging the result, the mod evaluates the Sim's actual life and personality, then chooses from the goals that genuinely fit.

It does not add new goals. It makes the existing Soul's Journey goals smarter.

✦ What changes?

Better Soul Goals takes full control of final goal ranking in all three ways a goal can be chosen:

- "Automatic goals" assigned by the game during normal play → every currently available concrete goal is scored against the Sim.
- "Write Goal" with no category selected → the mod chooses both the best-fitting category and the best-fitting goal.
- "Manual category" → your category choice is always respected, but the concrete goal inside that category is still selected by the full Sim-aware scoring system.

EA's native random weights do not rank the final result. EA is still used for the real goal pools, installed-pack availability, each goal's own availability tests, and the final game action that applies the goal.

✦ What does the mod look at?

The selector combines many signals at once instead of treating one trait or one category as destiny:

- personality traits
- relevant lifestyle and reward traits
- activity "Likes and Dislikes"
- exact skill levels
- career identity, career archetype and career level
- career + skill + personality synergies
- current aspiration theme
- age / life stage
- spouse, engagement, children, household and genealogy context
- current friendships and romantic relationships
- negative family context where relevant
- occult context
- travel/destination evidence where a specific destination goal actually needs a reason

A high skill matters, but the whole profile matters more.

✦ Skill depth matters

A Sim with Handiness 2 is not treated like someone whose lifelong dream should obviously be a master sculptor. Low levels are familiarity; meaningful mastery normally starts around level 5+, and higher levels keep adding evidence.

So if a Sim has "Writing 7" and "Handiness 5", writing will usually win — but if the rest of the Sim's personality strongly supports both, a small amount of uncertainty can remain.

✦ Explicit dislikes are real hard conflicts

If a Sim explicitly dislikes an activity, directly matching goals are blocked when the connection is unambiguous.

Examples:

- Dislikes Dancing → "Dance Party" cannot be selected.
- Dislikes Knitting → knitting-centered goals are excluded.
- Dislikes Cross-Stitch → cross-stitch goals are excluded.

A random EA weight or a weak unrelated bonus cannot rescue a goal centered on something the Sim explicitly hates.

✦ Social Sims are more nuanced than one trait

Traits such as "Loner" or "Socially Awkward" strongly reduce party/hosting goals, but they are not absolute bans. The mod also checks the Sim's real current relationships.

A socially awkward Sim with almost no friends should not suddenly decide that the dream of a lifetime is throwing parties. But a socially awkward Sim who genuinely has a large, established circle of friends can still plausibly want to host guests.

And if that Sim dislikes dancing, a Dance Party is still blocked regardless.

✦ Randomness only survives near genuine ties

This mod is intentionally much stricter than EA.

Normally, a goal must score at least 5 and stay within 2 points of the best candidate to enter the final pool. Then only a small Mussfis-controlled random factor remains:

- tied with the best goal → equal chance
- 1 point behind → 25% of a top candidate's weight
- 2 points behind → 8% of a top candidate's weight
- farther behind → cannot win by luck

This keeps Sims from becoming perfectly predictable without allowing nonsense goals to sneak through.

✦ Real examples from testing 

A doctor with an actual life

A doctor Sim with "Logic" skill, "Good" trait, a high medical career level, family ties and the "Mentor" reward trait started receiving knowledge/helping/family goals that made sense for him.

Before the full-control rewrite, the same profile could receive things like "Basketball", a generic "House Party", or "Visit Oasis Springs" with almost no convincing reason.

A writer who is more than her career

A writer Sim with "Writing 8", a writing career and "Geek" naturally received goals such as:

- "Write a Book"
- a fandom writing goal

But she is also married, has a child and has the "Mentor" reward trait, so the same global selector could also choose:

- "Renew Vows"
- a family role-model / mentoring goal

Her writing career is important, but it does not erase the rest of her life.

A writer who hates knitting

The same Sim explicitly dislikes "Knitting" and "Cross-Stitch". Those craft goals are removed from the eligible Create pool instead of merely receiving a small penalty.

✦ What the mod does not do

- It does not add custom Soul Goals.
- It does not disable Soul's Journey.
- It does not force unavailable DLC goals into the game.
- It does not ignore EA's per-goal availability tests.
- It does not globally alter unrelated random-loot systems; unrelated RandomWeightedLoot calls pass through to EA unchanged.

✦ Requirements

- The Sims 4: Life & Death — required
- Lot 51 Core Library — required
- Other DLC is optional. Only goals actually loaded by your installed game are considered.

✦ Installation

1. Remove any older version of "Mussfis Better Soul Goals". Do not keep test builds together with the release.
2. Install the release .ts4script in your Mods folder (no deeper than one subfolder).
3. Make sure Script Mods Allowed is enabled in Game Options.
4. After replacing an older test build, deleting localthumbcache.package is recommended.

✦ Compatibility 

Better Soul Goals only takes over the final ranking for the specific Life & Death Soul's Journey selectors it targets. Other random loot systems are passed through untouched.

Because this is a script mod that deliberately replaces Soul Goal selection logic, another mod that rewrites the same Life & Death goal selectors may conflict.

✦ Permissions

Personal edits are allowed.

If you modify, translate, adapt, fork, or publicly redistribute any version of this mod, you must:

• clearly credit Mussfis Mods as the original creator;

• include a visible link back to the original mod page/download;

• clearly state that your version is modified and is not the original release.

Please do not remove creator credit or present modified versions as entirely original work.

Translations may also be shared under the same conditions: credit + link to the original mod.

✦ Credits

Creator: Mussfis Mods

Required library: Lot 51 Core Library