I guess that, since the Enchanted by Nature EP, the game has tended to create reserve NPCs for each role, so existing fairy world NPCs won't have to stay for 24 hours unrealistically.
However, if this is true, the problem is why the game changes the rules for all EPs, especially Cottage Living and Life & Death, which heavily rely on official NPCs and lore.
Firstly, I thought the problem was only CoL EP (that's why we are here in this thread), but your observation proved that there is much more damage than that. The worst thing is that some townie NPC replaces the existing one.
I can't accept the Creature Keeper case that Michael Bell "can't" appear every time. While other roles are just duplicating, the Creature Keeper role right now always new townie, even Michael still exists.
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Bars need extra bartenders at each time shift before the current bugs. Sometimes they switch the shifts in the middle of a shift. For example, in 2PM-10PM shift, they switch shifts at 6 PM. So, you need many more NPCs. If you have Get Famous EP, the game will pick existing unemployed sims in the game, but if not, the game will create new townies.
But in the recent patch, there is a bug (I assume that it's a bug, but I wrote on feedback) that new townies are created whenever you use a computer to do a job (ex, write a paper)
I wrote the details here --> Right now, the game creates new townies when my Sims use the computer to work. | EA Forums - 12384080
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I haven't played Life & Death until now, and I also avoid visiting Ravenwood because I don't want to modify many of the new NPCs for now. Reading your case makes me want to avoid that world longer.
Thanks for reporting many cases about this. The NPC bugs make me suffer a lot, and I want the developers to take care of this as soon as possible!
Interesting about the computer bug, I will have to go look at that thread. I play rotationally, and some of my sims are freelancers so yeah, they've used the computer for their work, I'm sure. I also have some in semi-active careers where i sometimes work from home, and that sometimes involves a computer. But this also has happened just... randomly. Like right now i am playing a household where one owns a small buisness, and one is in the political career, and i always send her to work, and it's happening.
And yes, I know you need more than one sim for each role, for shifts. When I was manually assigning roles, I think i did like 5 bartenders, (including Corey Nyhus and Jesminder Bheeda cus why not) and 8 or so vendors, 4 gym trainers, and that seems to have worked so far to keep it from spawning new ones. But it was getting excessive before that, and I am still waiting to see if they will lose their roles over time. I am fine with there being several bartenders etc in my game. It's when I have a bartender, and then they seem to lose their role and then are just hanging around the world with nothing to do except show up on lots to fill space. Like a role i haven't assigned manually, is the Living Statue. I have a Living Statue that I gave a makeover to that I quite liked, so I remembered his name, and notice him when I play in San Myshuno, there was also another one that would do the statue thing sometimes. But for the past while, the game has spawned 2 new Living Statues, that I have never seen before, and I haven't seen him or the other one do the statue thing in a few game weeks now, but he does walk by on the street. I haven't touched him, he hasn't been moved int a lot, nothing. He just stopped doing his role and new ones were made.
this is him. He walks by all the time, but he hasn't done the statue thing in weeks, and that one with the black hair was generated like yesterday, along with another one. I'm taking down the names of the new ones and will try deleting them to see if he starts doing his thing again.
About assigning the role, how do you assign the bartender roles to existing premade sims? Normally, we can't just add a trait to make them being NPC Bartender for each lot (Unless you use mods such as Zero's one or NPCC, which I haven't tried yet). Having mods make the outcome different, so I want to know your game mechanics before going deeper.
Also, having or not having Get Famous EP will affect the rule of NPC generating, too. If you have Get Famous, the game will pick existing Sims for NPC jobs instead of creating new townies.
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Not only that, bartender outside "Bar, Nightclub, and Lounge" can't keep the role. Their role/job will be removed after you close the game and reload again.
For example, if you visited a Karaoke bar, exited the game to the main menu, and reloaded the game again, you will see that the existing bartender will lose the mixologist title (red font), and the new bartender will come to replace.
Most of the lots that need to have a bar but can't keep a permanent shift are in San Myshuno, or "City Living" lots. Ex, Karaoke bar, Art center. It's impossible to keep the same bartender working there. So, if you visit those lots a lot, you will have plenty of new bartenders who will lose the jobs after you close the game.
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About Living Statue, I haven't had the new one for a long time. In my main save, I have two of them. The first one is a teen guy, and the second one is a young adult girl. The second one appeared more often, but sometimes the first one still appears, too.
What I suspect is, the game will make new NPC when the first one isn't available. For example, if this red shirt guy visited the lot as a normal person, but then the game needs a Living Statue, it will make the 2nd one. But... the game will prefer to use "the recent one" instead of being completely random.
So, if you want the red shirt guy to appear as Living Statue again, you may remove Living Statue trait from two new ones (aka, remove the role), or delete them if you don't want to keep them in your game. Then wait to see if the red shirt guy can do a living statue job or if the game still makes the new one.
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I can't prove the result, because the game seems to change the mechanics of townies generating after Enchanted by Nature EP.
I used a lot of mods to stop townies from generating, so I can know when the new case happens without my consent.
I use a mod, but it does seem to stick after the mod is removed. Not Zero's, I use Gauntlet's mods, since i started with the bartender one just to fix Celene, and i've added a few others since then. With DJs I just used console cheats to assign both the trait and the job to Candy Behr and Joaquin LeChien and it's been working fine. So far Corey and Jesmender have been showing up to tend bar consistently, along with the others i assigned, they seem to rotate fairly evenly, and I have not seen any new ones made.
oh yeah, i forgot i assigned Zoe Patel.
this one is a rando that i gave a makeover to and intentionally assigned as a bartender, so she isn't random in this case.
And yeah I get you for trying to limit townie spawning. I give makeovers to townies and while i do allow them to die in Neighborhood Stories, it sucks to have them get culled or sidelined so some new fashion disaster can take their place.
I do not have Get Famous or Enchanted by Nature for reference. (the fame system just seemed annoying to me lol, so i skipped it, still deciding for Enchanted by Nature)
I haven’t known Gauntlet's mods before. So, I didn’t know that you can do this with the mod. I’ll go to check it out. What’s the name of mod you use?
(edit - I found it myself in Curseforge, I saw this before together with other npc mods, thanks!)
It would be useful if I can adapt to my game, because bartender is the role that can’t assign with console cheat.
I also gave makeover to all of townies I had. Or delete some townies who is too hard for edit or too many to keep. So, I don’t want to get new townies during gameplay. It’s annoying to have fashion disaster in the screenshot.
I do not have Get Famous or Enchanted by Nature for reference. (the fame system just seemed annoying to me lol, so i skipped it, still deciding for Enchanted by Nature)
I see, without Get Famous, game will create new townies for npc job. I also annoyed fame system a lot. I disable this EP in my main save file, and only use this EP with other save instead. I will play Enchanted by Nature soon, but I currently disable it to focus previous pack first. (I don’t want to spend time managing fairies townies for now)
