Souls Journey Overhaul (Update 11.15) (Patreon)

For each "Tier" of the Souls Journey, you get a reward. This mod makes those rewards different or weaker. It also adjusts the rate of development of your Soul's Journey slower.

Changes:

Tier Rewards

Tier 1, The Road Ahead:
Before: 1.25x Satisfaction Point gain.
After: 1.1x Satisfaction Point gain.

Tier 2, Making Headway:
Before: 1.1x Skill Gain
After: 1.05x Skill Gain

Tier 3, Finding Purpose:
Before: Increase Career Performance and Decreased Purchase Prices (???)
After: Same, because this is hard-coded to all the careers and purchase pickers...unless I remove the buff outright or replace it with a new one, which isn't very safe.

Tier 4, No Regrets:
Before: 1.25x longer age duration for YA, A, and E life stages
After: Same, but Embarrassed buffs are half as powerful.

Tier 5, Quite a Journey:
Sim can pass down Aspiration traits to other sims. No change.

Tier 6, Dreams Fulfilled:
Sim can Rebirth. No change.

Ghost Ranks

Tier 7, Newfound Purpose
Before: Ghost power EXP is 2x faster.
After: Ghost power EXP is 1.5x faster.

Tier 8, The Big Picture:
Several reincarnation benefits. No change.

Souls Journey Experience Gain

Reduces Souls Journey Experience Gain by 50-75% in certain cases.

Souls Journey EXP is given in 4 possible ways- Small Gain, Regular Gain, Large Gain, and Aspiration Completion gain. Each of these has a standard rate of change, and additional bonuses for things like being a ghost, or for a Sim who has recently been given "Inspiration for the Soul" by a Sim using the Share Souls Journey interaction from Tier 3.

I have adjusted the "base" gain on each of these options to match the bonus values, which lowers the base gain 50-75%.

Based on the formatting of the tuning I almost want to say the default values are a mistake, just due to pattern recognition in the tuning. I adjusted these numbers to what it "seems like they were meant to be", but I wouldn't call this a "Fix" as it's just going off patterns and an attempt to make the journey harder overall.

A Note On Balance

These changes were a gut-reaction to my 3-days-from-elder Sim completing a Midlife Crisis and gaining enough Souls Journey experience from it to reach Tier 2, giving him significant Satisfaction Point and Skill Gains despite only spending one singular afternoon doing it.

(Edit: As pointed out in the comments, Midlife Crisis gains Souls Journey EXP simply for finishing, even if you didn't address the crisis whatsoever. I can confirm this mod will mean that the Crisis ending will progress the journey significantly less now. This doesn't make Midlife Crisis meaningless for journey EXP, however, as completing certain goals while attending to one may offer their own bits of EXP along the way!)

I have not extensively balance tested the speed of fulfilling the Souls Journey. If anyone finds it too difficult I can release flavors, and I will update the mod if I find these new values too hard. As usual, my mods err on the side of "Things being a bit too tough" to make them more interesting, but I try to make them reasonable.

Age Span Duration

By request I have added an OPTIONAL addon that will remove this benefit, but note that it modifies a kind-of core file relating to aging and may well be incompatible with other mods that affect aging stuff. DO NOT USE unless you are a responsible mod user who is aware of the risks (which are mostly just that other mods that alter this file will compete with it for dominance, nothing super major).

The game checks for the hidden trait from this part of the Souls Journey. The other option would be to change the trait, so that the game can't detect it since it doesn't exist, and replace all the relevant pieces so all the stuff involved still works...but that sounds messier than just risking incompatibility with other mods.

Keep in mind I don't know what other mods this is incompatible with, whatsoever. It appears to be fine with how MCCC handles aging-related settings. The only way to be sure is to earn the benefit and see if your sim's age span is correct. I have not tested any of this for compatibility with other mods. It modifies the agingtransition_human_youngadult, agingtransition_human_adult, and agingtransition_human_elder tunings. If a mod alters any of those, it'll be incompatible.

AND ONE MORE THING

I don't like maintaining "flavors" of mods. So if this change seems too slow to you, open the package up with Sims 4 Studio. Find the 4 files on the left side named "Action Tuning".

If you want to use another mod that slows Souls Journey, delete these files.

If you're only using my mod and want to adjust the speed, click them. The very top number after "Statistic Change" in each of these is what I changed. If you want it to be faster, make the number bigger. Small, Regular, and Large are used for things the game deems worth "a little bit", "a normal amount", and "a lot" of experience. The aspiration one is for completing aspirations (I think? I don't believe it's for each aspiration goal, but each stage). You can tweak them to your liking. It's easy! Don't change anything else but that first number.

Update: Added a Long Lifespan flavor. Reduces the already slower speed of experience by half, and also lowers the previously unchanged bonus points gained from various other factors to match.