Hi
I've been playing this save 4 days in game.
The neighborhoods are like ghost towns. 1 or 2 sims appear at lots as guests, and most townies work as vendors, door guards, gym trainers, etc. instead of sims spawning to fill these roles, which was what used to happen.
San Myshuno which is usually pretty bustling for me (10 sims or so, I never thought I would have to count the exact amount), is almost completely dead. My sims is self employed so I haven't gone to an active career lot, the sim isn't living in an apartment so no landlord, and I haven't visited a vacation worlds, so I haven't checked those yet. Literally the only sims in the household manager are the townies, pre-generated celebrities, the mayor cat and a ghost dog, and a bartender named Alex Moyer (a GF pre-generated NPC, I'm assuming).
Like, idk if the pre-generated celebrities or something threw it off, but I used to get 15~ households in game. I've played the Friend of the World Aspiration several times and would get 50/50 split of townie friends and NPC friends before, and now literally all of my friends would be townies.
Maybe I was getting too many NPCs before, but if this how game is supposed to work, the bug was much more preferable.