Recently returned to the game after a ten year absence, about half my current games are continuing from saves dated summer 2016. All is well except for some weirdness (I mentioned missing aquariums in another thread, but these new oddities aren't about items).

Suddenly all my sims with cars have those cars on their friend list. I thought this was a feature of the Fast Lanes SP, which I do not have. I just downloaded a mod to remove this.

I continually get messages (upper right of screen) along the lines of, "Great job! Those vampires and zombies will think twice before returning." This sounds like something from Supernatural EP, which I also do not have. I can ignore this, it's just curious. (With NRAAS I have disabled all mention of occult careers, immigrants, etc.)

I have three characters in Sunlit Tides (different games/saves). On one of them, a continuation of a 2016 game, almost all the ladies in town now have the career "Papparazzi Mama". What the....?! I've never seen this anywhere else and no idea from where it came. Other than bailing this game (NO!) or painstakingly editing each sim back to their original career, is there a simple solution to this?

My original game only had Ambitions and Seasons, my new install added Generations to this; could it be the cause of these anomalies?

Sims with trait vehicle enthusiast can have cars, etc in friends list. Not sure if that's only with Fast Lane. Vampires are also in Late Night, if you have that, but pretty sure zombies are only SN, so no idea what that could be.

Are you also playing with the same mods you had ten years ago? They would be terribly out of date by now, if so.
Is the game itself up to date?

Aside from the car friendships, none of what you mentioned sounds recognisable from the unmodded game. That career title especially is definitely not EA.
Exact quotes or screenshots of the notifications would be helpful to identify.

You may have some very old mod content in play, or perhaps some large / intrusive mods doing things with townies.

Game version 1.67, same as I had back then. I found a backup of my "Documents.....Sims3" folder on an old HD, reinstalled the game on my new system, checked it, then copied that old backup to new system and started playing; revisiting my old saves (what a time warp) and starting several new games.

Attached, hopefully, is my packages list

Three of the first four ladies on this character's friend list in Sunlit Tides have this career...

The package list was very helpful, as it includes the date of the files

Your NRaas mods are from 2014 (12 years outdated!) so you'll probably see a lot of old weirdness that we don't even have documentation about anymore :P
I'd definitely recommend deleting those and downloading fresh copies - just note that the website is in the process of a server move, so if any downloads aren't working give it a couple of hours and try again.
Your settings will be preserved, at least the ones that still exist in the current versions.

Apparently 'Mama/Papa Paparazzi' is the first career level of the self-employed Photographer career. Not as weird as I first thought, but something is causing these sims to be reassigned to that career.
After updating, give them new careers with MasterController and see if the issue returns.

I can't spot any other notable script mods in the list, but you can also try removing the other files if strange behaviour continues.

You also shouldn't have .png files in there. Only saw this one... 07/01/2023 07:44 AM 30,390 CarExoticSuperCE.png

Thanks for the info.

That png was probably in the zip file for that package; I just copy the zip to the appropriate folder and "extract here", then delete it, so usually have extraneous txt files and image files scattered around numerous programs, which eventually get deleted (the files, not the programs).

In the files list anything dated later than mid 2016 is something added in the past month, so I assume (and I know what happens when you assume, lol) those are "recent". Will look for updates for the rest.

The papparazzi issue is curious in that it only affects one of my four games on Sunlit Tides, two are continuations of 2016 games, the other two started recently; the issue is in one of those older games, but didn't appear til I'd been playing it about two weeks now. Except for the files listed above, my Sunlit Tides is default and displays all the known glitches (thirty minutes of playing will have several stuck sims, unroutable sims, reset sims ...I was reset once, merely walking along the beach outside the Festival Grounds). I've perused the "fixed" Sunlit Tides files, but my understanding is you cannot continue existing games after installing this, you must start over ...perhaps in the future, after my current games there are finished.

FWIW, there's one other anomaly in all worlds, from old saves or newly started games - there are never any sims staffing the vendor stalls at the festivals. I use NRAAS Register to assign them from the pool of unemployed, they show up for the duration of that festival, but must be reassigned at the next. When I again open Register there are options for "Select" and "Unassign" ...unassign what? they aren't there and must be assigned again. This isn't difficult, and isn't a game breaker, it's just odd that no one wants to work the festivals.

It could be the case that you have some custom settings in the old saves that you no longer remember the purpose of, such as changes to StoryProgression's castes.
Resetting each mod to its defaults would be the next step, if weird behaviours continue after updating.

Updating Overwatch will introduce years worth of new bugfixes, so at least some of them may be resolved next time you load the game. If this save has been played for many sim-weeks, some stubborn glitches may stick around.
If you want the stability of starting fresh, you don't have to give up on your progress so far - you can use NRaas Porter to pack any and all households you care about and unpack them in a new save. Relationships will be preserved, and any dopplegangers (if the new save is in the same world) will be automatically replaced.

I'm guessing that your Sunlit Tides was installed from a modified copy, as legitimate Store content doesn't actually work when copied from one computer to another. This could also be a culprit - as methods for decrypting worlds have improved over the years, I can't guarantee that older redistributions were error-free.

/

The register/stall problem is quite common.

It's often related to the role sims getting forced into jobs by the core, so they're occupied during their role hours. The routing errors could also be contributing, if role sims are getting stuck and reset. Installing NRaas GoHere may help there, as it contains a number of fixes to routing behaviour.

Giving a self-employed career to or retiring the sims who are assigned to the stall can help ensure that they're free to tend it.

"...legitimate Store content doesn't actually work when copied from one computer to another. This could also be a culprit - as methods for decrypting worlds have improved over the years, I can't guarantee that older redistributions were error-free."

None of my worlds were copied. When I started this project I wasn't even sure those old saves could be salvaged, so spent a couple of evenings reading everything I could find on the topic; my new install is based on consensus of that.

First, leave that old "Documents...Sims3" folder alone for now.

Install the base game (this is on a new computer, less than a month old, so no orphaned data from previous installs). Run it once to set options and see if all is well.

Install any EPs used for the previous saves (any others are optional and shouldn't make any difference to those saves). Run the game to see if they are recognized. Ambitions and Seasons were the only required ones in this case, I added Generations to the new install.

Install any necessary worlds that require the launcher to install (Sunlit Tides, installed, uninstalled, reinstalled, three times before getting it working as well as it is now).

Run the game, make sure all worlds are accessible. Grab a default sim and visit each world for an "exploratory mission". If all is well, now go to the old files.

I followed a list of the necessary folders to copy/paste from the old "Documents...Sims3" to the new one, allowing overwrites. Also to download a custom ccmerged file containing all references and replace the existing one with it.

Cross my fingers and start the game. Well, the game loaded fine; three worlds available - Twinbrook, Sunset Valley (still my favorite), and Sunlit Tides (always problematic); and lo and behold, there are all my saves. I select one, play the HOG and ... CTD (as an aside, one aspect of this game shows how computers have changed in the past ten years; playing the HOG as the Sims loaded back then I could easily get 600-700 pts, today I rarely get more than 100). I peruse the Documents folder, nothing suspicious except windows slaps my wrist with an "access denied, you do not have permission" when I merely click on the "currentgame.sims3" folder, which should, at this point, be just an empty folder. I use Unlocker, which says there are no locking flags, so I tell it to rename the folder at the next system start, then restart windows and the folder is missing completely; I manually create it, restart the game, select the same save ...and it now loads and seems fine. Terminate the game, restart and try another save - same thing exactly, a CTD, restart, load same save, it now runs fine. Out of curiosity I ran the save game cleaner on the next one, then started the game and loaded it with no problems. So ran the cleaner on the remaining old saves and have been enjoying them all, along with several new games; recently installed Hidden Valley and have an interesting game there.

Added "Go Here" to my list of files to get.

Again, thanks for the input.