Replaced all [“water”, “out” ] statements with [“water”] and it now works with version 1.86/1.88. This file has been playing over two years so the existence of the parameter makes sense.

It's a custom mission but one that is popular among players called "Invade and Annex". As stated, the mission loads and plays but hangs when creating the main AO thus interrupting everything downstream. A custom "fn_getAO.sqf" script chooses a random location using a "call BIS_fnc_getCfgData" function. Since the update, it throws the error mentioned above. By removing the two lines of code added to "fn_getArea.sqf" with the 1.86 update, everything runs perfectly as before. The call for "fn_getArea.sqf" does not appear anywhere in the entirety of all files that make up the mission which is the frustration.