Trashley ruined my save. State of the game is upsetting.

I'd just like to add (I've spent the last hour or so combing through each world and deleting/fixing families one by one. I'm still not done yet) that this issue also introduced a lot of non-deletable babies and some toddlers. tl;dr all neighbourhood stories options were still on despite having been turned off and unchecked. 

Reporting in! I've done all I can to try and fix the issue, but it's hopeless. Neighbourhood stories is permanently on no matter what I do. I check the mailbox, and hey presto - someone adopted a cat, or had a baby. There's nothing I can do. It's ruined.

Hi JCBENTON 

You didn't state if you use any mods/cc in your game. Do you have them ?

Neighborhood stories only moves complete households. It doesn't move in Sim with other families.

The game does create homeless Sims but not 100s in a short time so there might be something else.

Hello! Thanks for the response. Forgive the dramatics, but I was overwhelmed by the situation last night.

Currently just cosmetic CC (werewolf hairstyles), as well as Shorter Somber Howl Cooldown, and some paintings, but this behaviour was in effect before the cooldown mod or the paintings mod were installed. I also had MCCC for a brief period, but I uninstalled it shortly after, and I didn't really do anything with it besides kill a sim. Furthermore, I installed MCCC long after Trashley's setting reset fiasco.

In my case, sims were leaving to join other families, sometimes abandoning their own, which is contradictory to what you say - worth investigating? I found three instances of this happening; I spent an hour evicting/deleting everyone and removing toddlers/adopted pets (shame you can't remove the many babies), and I managed to wrangle some Maxis-created sims back into their original lots:

• Everybody except Gunther in the Munch household went to live with Urbane Housesharers (Name of the household has since become renamed "Black" for some reason).
• Katrina Caliente disappeared from her home. I think I found her living with the Flex household, as the Flex household is now currently in "My Households", yet is classed as unplayed, which happens when transferring or removing sims from "Other Households".
• As previously mentioned, Kristopher and Jacob Volkov left Lily Zhu, and were found living with a randomly generated sim in Willow Creek. Nobody will ever find that random-gen sim's grave.

I don't think the game was creating those sims which moved into empty homes in a short time - I've been playing a LOT in the past month or so. I believe Trashley resetting options during his first meeting caused neighbourhood stories, in both the played and unplayed bins, to reset to ON (default) despite what the presented options displayed to me. So, those sims had been building up before Businesses and Hobbies, and perhaps Trashley's reset enabled them to cause chaos?

There's some hope, at least! I've been trying everything I can to fiddle with the settings. So far, turning neighbourhood stories OFF actually enables it - Trashley's curse. I've been creating new games, saving settings, loading back into the affected save etc (this is the proposed workaround proffered in other threads regarding being prompted for season selection, which doesn't always seem to work), to see if I can fix the issue, but for now I'm going to test this: turning neighbourhood stories ON, but disabling all the specific options in both "played households" and "other households". In theory, that should function as if the feature were disabled. I'm going to watch it like a hawk, and report back if it's still cursed. If this doesn't work, then I don't know what to do.

TBH, I don't really understand what this all has to do with Trashley ? What do you mean by Trashleys resetting options ? Do you mean the Business tutorial (aka discovery quest ?)

Unless they changed anything with NS, it's basically a two step thing.

• The game creates new households as it needs it (way to many, but that's a different point). These are all homeless and has nothing to do with neighborhood stories or the old fill empty homes
• NS now tries to move these in if you have that option on. It looks for an empty lot and then fills those with homeless Sims households. NS also moves Sims back to homeless if you allow that option.m

As said, this shouldn't merge households, just move them in it's entirety (unless that was changed)

Did ever check on any of the neighborhood stories on your mailbox to see if any of the moving together happened ?

You had MCCC installed. MCCC moves and adjusts households. You installed a mod without undersatnding what it did, and it did the things it is designed to do. It has its own story progression features that move Sims around following a set of default rules that you clearly did not adjust, since you don't understand how any of this happened. Lesson learned: Don't install mods without understanding what they do.

This has nothing to do with neighborhood stories or with talking to an NPC. You simply installed a mod without paying attention to it. The population module filled empty homes and moved Sims around. The Pregnancy module added a ton of babies. It's what these mods do.

Intern_Waffle_64 that was my first thought but they said they installed MCCC after it all happened. Which is why I'm confused.

I'm betting they simply didn't notice until after uninstalling the mod. The *instant* MCCC is installed and you run your save game in live mode, it starts doing tons of stuff. 

Hi! Yes, it has to do with Trashley's business tutorial, as noted in this thread: https://forums.ea.com/idea/the-sims-4-bug-reports-en/s-stuck-on-select-season-for-several-unrelated-interaction-1-113-2882-09/11967917/comments/11969422

Saying yes to him when he asks if you want to turn discovery quests on reset quite a lot of my settings, including NS, autonomy, aging, season length, lunar cycle - all sorts of things like that which shouldn't have been affected. It was as if he actually reset all settings to default, not just discovery quests. I ticked off Neighbourhood Stories at the time and thought no more of it, but it seems NS was surreptitiously on since then - long before and long after my brief stint with MCCC. Post MCCC uninstallation, I confirmed that the postbox was giving fresh updates about pet and toddler adoptions etc. I've made the decision - just to be safe - to export my sims and just start again on a clean installation.

Thankfully I think @Intern_Waffle_64 has come to the rescue here in regards to why the families split. I had no idea MCCC was anything more than a sort of advanced debug mode. Installed it (to reiterate: long after Trashley messed with my settings) for about an hour of play after it was recommended to me, then uninstalled it. In that short time, it must've split those three households apart. Thanks for shedding a light on that! 

Can you duplicate all the setting resetting if you test that part again on a new save game ?

Will test this although I notice anything happen in my game but since I started this one on an early access version, there could be differences since then.

At this point I think it would be best to make a new thread just about the all settings resetting.

Basically just a new thread with this part as error description

Saying yes to him when he asks if you want to turn discovery quests on reset quite a lot of my settings, including NS, autonomy, aging, season length, lunar cycle - all sorts of things like that which shouldn't have been affected. It was as if he actually reset all settings to default, not just discovery quests. I ticked off Neighbourhood Stories at the time and thought no more of it, but it seems NS was surreptitiously on since then