After I noticed the cafeteria worker issue with the most recent (console) update, my sim traveled to 3 different community lots and found two of them completely empty, with no staff and no visitors. ...
Ideas
I'm experiencing this too on my long-time forever save. I've noticed that when loading on to community lots like bars and libraries, there are no staff or visitors, the lot is completely empty.
I've tested this completely without mods by removing everything in my mod folder so that any exception files showed modded: false. And even reverted my save using backups to ones from before the current Adventure Awaits pre-patch two weeks ago, a save backup from August two months ago, a backup from July three months ago, and an even older backup from January 10 months ago and seen the same thing - empty community lots.
I'm pretty sure at the time in my older saves from months ago I don't remember seeing this issue with community lots. So it seems more like something in the current game version isn't populating regular venues properly, even if you load older saves that were working with previous versions of the game.
It's got to extreme levels in Britechester after I played a week of a uni sim where the student commons were empty, except for the caterer who always still comes, but worse for uni org events - now their upcoming calendars are missing all bar events and study sessions at the library - the Brainiacs club panel is blank on events with the words "There are no library venues in the world to support the event" even though the Britechester library is still there, just empty whenever I visit. It's like the game doesn't see these as existing when there's no sims there or they failed to load properly.
I even had an issue completing the latest week of the Forever Friends event, on the quest step to travel to a park. I went to Magnolia Blossom in Willow Creek and Desert Bloom in Oasis Springs - they were completely empty with no visitors and it wouldn't complete the quest step, probably because in their failed load state they didn't consider them to be parks, even though I traveled there. I managed to complete the quest step by going to the Center Park in San Myshuno since that's a different park type and there were still working visitors and a bartender in the park there.
There's several threads for specific lots showing empty. The organizations have their own here: [DU] Scheduled Organization Events on lots: No one shows up | EA Forums - 11874522 (Maxis is looking for saves) and the others have been mentioned in the OP.
Don't think we have a current one for parks and stuff so I'm going to put this on review but it's best if you directly use individual threads where they exist.
I reverted to an earlier save before the uni org events broke, and they seem to be functional for now. I think once they break, the game got stuck in a state where it could never schedule a new one again, so I'll have to keep watch and exit without saving if I see it happen again.
For some of the other lots, I've taken my sims there and seen no other sims, but then managed to bring them to life by quickly flicking into build mode and out again without making any lot changes. That seemed to trigger the lot zone director and things like bartenders and other sims started slowly showing up. But I think that's more of a workaround than an actual solution to the lot not loading with people already on it.
One avenue to investigate while I was trying to troubleshoot is that the broken lots I was noticing contained objects that have their own object based scheduling - like the VIP rope door from Get Famous that summons a bouncer if placed, and the community NAP board from Eco Lifestyle which summons voter sims to gossip around the board. I have those placed on my student commons at both universities which were broken. The TDESCs for the latest version of the game say that the tuning for object based scheduling is being deprecated, and replaced by a new method called object situation shifts, but the VIP rope object and NAP board still have the older tuning. The cafeteria object used at uni commons also has these built in object scheduling, but interestingly the ZoneDirector for student commons has the new method built into the ZoneDirector for the cafeteria object, which is why even though I see no other students or professors visiting, it always summoned a cafeteria worker just fine.
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