[COL] NPC roles assigned to multiple Sims (Sometimes duplicates)

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)

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) 

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.

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. 

The Chopras are not hidden, they have a house by default so they can't be in a hidden household. But yes, the Crumplebottoms are hidden, i presume to make it harder for them to be cloned, since moving into a lot, or becoming played, are triggers for spawning a new sim for the role, which in their case is a clone. The other roles will just spawn a rando if you play as them, but the Crumplebottoms get cloned. Some other hidden households include Grim, Greg, Edith, Alice, Waylon, Roberto Crinkletop, Bernard and Mimsy (though in my game they aren't... but they do still do their roles, so... maybe they already got cloned for me, and I never noticed until after i befriended them. But in any case, there is only one copy of them now. I have a mod that lets you summon the urn of any ghost in the game, and they only show up once, and it's been that way for a long time, aside from the recent dupe. They still do their roles, so if they did get cloned, the hidden version must have gotten culled because i had a relationship with the ones in manage households, and it works, so... ) and Erwin Pries. Who in my game was replaced by a rando tending his stall and i thought he got culled, but maybe it was actually this bug at work, and he just lost his role. In any case, I made a new Erwin who now is in my households to protect him from culling, and it was a real PITA to get to tend the stall. 

I deleted all the game-generated townies I could find after my post. It looks like they spawned new ones. I am talking to a Creature Keeper, dressed appropriately, named Traci Blankenship and looking at the three errands offered by the Creature Keeper and two of the errands are offered by Michael Bell, and show his portrait, and one of the errands is offered by Traci Blankenship with her portrait. I was able to accept the errands with Michael Bell's name and portrait while talking to Traci Blankenship.

In Henford-on-Bagley, random Sims often show up in the special roles (Creature Keeper, Grocery Shop Owner, Village Mayor, Pub Owner) instead of the original townies — even though the original Sims are still fine and present in the game. I’ve also run into cases where there were two Agathas and two Agneses at the same time — my sim knew the original Sims, but not their duplicates.

Version 1.118.242.1030 (PC)
For verification, I deleted the Sims 4 folder from Documents, repaired the game through the EA app, and started a new game.

New save, started this week. About 9 Sim days have passed since I started playing the game.

When I read a village board near my Sims' house at 2 Olde Mill Lane, the board falsely states two unnamed random Sims are Agnes and Agatha (they do not seem to have names and do not label the position as Garden Shop Owner) , random Sim Jermaine Woodson is the Creature Keeper, random Sim Lakeisha Shepard is the Grocery Deliverer, random Sim Joelle Dubose is the Grocery Deliverer, then accurately states Lavina Chopra is the Mayor of Finchwick and Sara Scott is the Pub Owner. 

Immediately after reading this board I travelled to the pub and was able to find Sara Scott labelled as the Pub Owner, Kim Goldbloom as the Grocery Shop Owner,  Agnes and Agatha Crumplebottom are both labelled the Garden Shop Owner, Lavina Chopra as the Mayor of Finchwick, and when I read the village board at the pub, it accurately states that Agatha and Agnes Crumplebottom are Garden Shop Owners (text shows correctly), Michael Bell is the Creature Keeper, Rahul Chopra is the Grocery Deliverer, Kim Goldbloom is the Grocery Shop Owner, Lavina Chopra is the Mayor of Finchwick, and Sara Scott is the pub owner.

I had never seen the two unnamed Sims, Jermaine Woodson, Lakeisha Shepard, or Joelle Dubose at the pub, or in my game, and could not find them in my relationship panel. I went to manage households and found Jermaine Woodson wearing the Creature Keeper clothing and currently not in world, Joelle Dubose is also currently not in world and wearing a grocery apron. These appear to be game-generated random townies.

What I have noticed about the Henford bug, and it's been mentioned here as well, is that the Henford NPCs show up in my unplayed households, when I believe at least the Mayor and the Crumplebottoms should be "hidden" households unaffected by Neighbourhood Stories? Now they show up as weird household names in my unplayed households, then via NS they get married and move into houses around the world, this definitely didn't use to happen. I am guessing because they are not assigned their special "hidden" role anymore, the system thinks they were played, and regenerates new ones to replace them?

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!