Put a "Stop Generating Random Townies" Button in the settings

More than just "an option", we need a whole range of tools and menus to control the population. They were probably aiming for spontaneity and mystery, but it didn't work. Maybe in a future release, but for now, give us the means to fix this.

This is the point I was going to make.   The main excuse is "The Game needs NPC's to man stuff", but it doesn't cut it.   Why can't the game use NPC's that are already there in the game?  I have hundreds of unplayed townies that I've placed in the world from my library.  Most of them are unemployed and could be used.  And even if they were all employed, why not switch their career so they fill a needed NPC role?  It doesn't make sense that the game just keeps generating more and more townies for this reason.  And the game generates them non-stop regardless of whether there are roles to fill or not.  It's ridiculous!   But not as ridiculous as most of them look! 

I've even tried to get around it by manually assigning the needed NPC role to my own townies, but NO!   The game ignores the NPC I've just given the role to and goes and generates its own NPC for the role anyway and uses that NPC instead of the one I have just assigned!   I mean that seems like they are intentionally going out of their way to make sure the player is forced to do things EA's way instead of their own way.  Crazy! 

So Yes, I agree, there needs to be an option to switch this insanity off.  Have the game use townies already in the game to fill NPC roles and if there aren't any, then fair enough, generate one.  There used to be mods that did this, but now they don't work in later versions of the game.   It's very frustrating having to go in to manage households and delete stupid looking sims all of the time. 

I want to play in a world designed by me, without it being invaded by a bunch of random ugly clowns showing up everywhere! 

Honestly I keep Cas.fulleditmode on all the time and fix them when I find them. There seems to be an unending supply of them.

This is an annoying known issue, but not strictly a bug as far as I'm aware. The game is pretty heavy handed with townie generation and (apparently) also quite whimsical with townie culling. Limiting your max number of sims might help?

It doesn't crash my game but Wow! aren't they ugly hot messes with the mismatched clothing and so many with green or blue hair. What the heck!

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
What is your current game version number? 1.98.158.1020
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? Everything minus most kits
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Play the game for a few sims day and count newly created homeless households
What happens when the bug occurs? Game endlessly generates townies
What do you expect to see? The game reuse generated townies for their existing roles and only generate new townies when absolutely necessary. (example: if 8 Strangerville scientists already exist, don't generate more)
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Not now. I've removed them.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? Neutral/Not Sure 

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I last played the sims somewhere around the release of cottage living. After that I took a long break that I am now returning from. I decided I'd replay Strangerville and this is when i noticed my issue.

The game seems to endlessly generate townies whenever one is needed for a situation. Having played an in game sim week, the game had generated about 15+ of each Strongerville role. Even though the game has already generated that many scientists, military, and conspiracy sims, the game doesn't seem to reuse/respawn them and makes a brand-new townie when the game needs to fill a roll. I mentioned above that I last played when cottage living came out, as I don't recall this being an issue then. During that time I was also playing jungle adventure and I don't recall the game constantly making new local townies for that.

Having so many sims filling up the non-played household tab has become frustrating, and I hope something can be done to limit the amount of needed townies

I'm on one of my sims kicks lately, but I'm about to quit due to the townies. I always end up forgetting how annoying they are. I decided I wanted to play strangerville again, but the game spawns SO MANY unnecessary townies. The game already generated enough scientists, military, conspiracy peeps. Why does the game continue to spawn more? I have about 20+ of each strangerville townie. Why doesn't the game reuse the already generated townies, it's so frustrating.

Changing the way townies are generated should be priority 1 for the devs. It is INSANE that we get hundreds of randos. Just use the same townies for these roles!!! Or better yet, just NPC's! They cause the game too lag even on a high gaming PC. The way the devs design it IS the bug.

So, this is a known thing. The game needs random Sims to fill NPC jobs. There are roles that aren't playable jobs, and for whatever reason the game generates a new Sim for those nonplayable jobs rather than using, say, Bob Pancakes as your stall vendor. (Eliza seems to show up a lot in the science career in my saves, though, for some reason.)

There are a couple of things that people recommend, but they're all mods.

1. There's a mod that is behind a permanent paywall that people frequently recommend but I'm going to not do that because I've never used it--I don't use permanent paywall mods. You can find it if you want.

2. MC Command Center has a feature that imports random townies from your tray. I use this a lot, and semi-regularly go to the gallery and download cute Sims to spawn in as townies. This completely ignores their skills and traits, though; it just uses their appearance. This is mostly good enough for my purposes, as I just don't want a lot of hideous fashion disasters walking around my game. You can also go out of your way to download diverse Sims to put in your tray, and I highly recommend this as well. The game doesn't always do the best job of generating minority Sims, in my opinion.

3. Zero has a mod called "Assign NPC Role" and I've experimented with this. Once you do this you can't play them, of course, but it does work. I created Sims (well, tray Sims, see above) and assigned them NPC roles in the acting career, and when my actress showed up on set they were the director, producer, etc. Then I went to the park and my assigned gardener showed up to garden there. I mean, it's hilarious that Guillermo de la Cruz from What We Do in the Shadows always ends up the costume guy on set and Parker from Leverage always ends up the gardener, but... This might be more than you want to do, but I did it as part of setting up my starter save. It's really nice that the mother of one of my townie teens is an NPC gardener, and I enjoyed setting up a household with a Nanny mom and a DJ Headliner son...

Between 2 and 3, I'm mostly satisfied. If someone is generated in that's too hideous, I just delete them and let MCCC spawn in someone from my tray.

Sadly, for console players, I think you would have to just give fashion makeovers to all those Sims as they spawn in, yikes. ☹️