[limabifrost]

My opinion on religions in the sims:

I think it's asking too much to include religions- it detracts from the gaming experience. If you want to build your own churches/temples that's fine, but where do you draw the line if you include religions? 'Christianity', 'muslim', 'jewish', they're all too vague with all their subgenres; this is excluding scientology, norse, jedi, Flying Spaghetti Monster (touched by his noodly appendage- heh)... The list goes on. You'll never please everyone and when it comes to religion, it's probably best to avoid it altogether. And would athiesm/agnostic be an option too? Personally i'd hate for my sims to have religion.

I never had a problem with santa claus in sims 2 because he's not christian, he's consumerism (ha!); and the odd religious item would be ok, like the jewish candelabra or zen garden, you're not really offending anyone there.

A sim-specific religion could be a comprimise, but you'd have to base their festivals on existing ones for people to relate to them, and then do you just go for christianity as people know easter and christmas more than, let's say, eid? That's going to annoy people of other faiths.

Also, would there be benefits to being religious in-game; like if you pray then occasionally money/friends/relationships rain from the sky? Otherwise there'd be no point to putting it in the game (no comment on real religion here, just it would be an empty interaction for the sim). 'Obtaining inner peace' could be an option, maybe sims increase their abilities for a few hours after praying.. But if you do get rewards for praying, then which religion would get them? All? That's going to cause some conflict with the more devoutly religious sims fans.

Although, having JWs going door to door could be quite funny.. You could get a chance card everytime they knock; either you get rid of them as a result or they invite themselves in and stay for the rest of the day lol. Same with door-to-door double glazing and driveway pavers.