Crate devs : We will avoid religion entirely! That way we can’t upset anyone!
Forum : 
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Also…
Just say it’s loosely based on 5th century Britain!
“In reality, the spiritual practices of Britons varied hugely from place to place. No-one knows exactly what the Britons believed before the Romans introduced them to Christianity, but they seem to have revered the power of nature and to have worshipped ancestors.”
“There is some evidence for the existence of timber temples, although other cultic spaces might have been open-air, and would have included cultic trees and megaliths.”
No churches 
and they said they’ll be adding more buildings etc so timber “temples” or similar may come at some point.
Also before the cries of “but stone roads! Romans! Christianity!”
“Archaeologists uncovered the remains of a well-maintained and well-built British road beneath an ancient Roman road in 2011. This evidence contrasts what modern texts teach about primitive-pagan peoples inhabiting the land before Caesar conquered it and even draws into question the long ages of human development suggested by evolution.”
Sources : 5 minutes of top google links.
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We’ve already established this game was fantasy. I don’t think that’s the point/ issue.
If you show people what obviously resembles a medieval town in northern europe they expect to see a church, simple as that. No political explanation/ creative problem solving (“It just hasn’t been built yet.”) will make people feel differently about their idea of what a medieval town should look like.
Think of it this way: Players want bridges for rivers. Of course, because this is fiction devs could just implement portals instead - might be easier to code. But I doubt most players would be satisfied with that solution. 
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You’re over-thinking this. I’m 45, literally have a degree in ancient history and have traveled to Europe several times. Zantai is actually from Europe and went to church in an old medieval fortress-cathedral. I grew in small-town New England, the quintessential colonial frontier, surrounded by historic wooden churches.
The #1 reason there’s no religion yet is that by the time I started thinking about how to add it in, we had a lot of older systems in the game that needed to be refactored and or fixed. It’s what we call “development debt” where you’ve build a lot of stuff that is sort-of-working but in order to actually get into a release-ready state, it requires a lot of additional work. About a year ago we switched from adding features to just trying to get all our existing features and content into release-ready condition because I was growing increasingly concerned that we’d maybe worked on the game too long without having any idea of how well it might sell. I thought we’d get through everything and be able to hit up some more features but just fixing and polishing to get the game to the state its in now took almost a year.
Now that we’re in EA and the game is doing well, justifying the time we’ve invested in it, we are able to look at making some more feature and content additions. Depending on how in depth we wanted to go with religion and how many options we wanted to give people, we could make it a DLC or keep things simpler and add it in a free update.
When we do add religion, I don’t know if we’ll include a classic looking church or not. I’m not sure if I want to add them, not because I’m woke and afraid of offending people (I mean, we’re clearly going to offend someone whatever we do), it is that I am just personally not that interested in churches and the game was never meant to be a real-world history simulator. Despite coming from a more Catholic family and being fairly conservative themselves, my parents were never very religious and I grew up with no personal attachment to churches. I’m sorry if that offends you but that’s where I’m coming from. I find many older European religious just as, if not more interesting and would probably rather just do my own thing here that is a blend of historical sources. The goal of this game was to create a detailed and authentic feeling pioneer-survival experience but not to accurately simulate real-world history. If you’re after more historical accuracy, there’s already games that strive for that.
Its kind of ironic that you think we’re leaving out churches because we’re woke and afraid of offending people and yet here you are, being all offended, like the cancel-culture mob you think we’re worried about.
What I can tell you is, if you decide to make your own game and put churches or whatever else you want in it, I guarantee I won’t show up on your forums being all publicly offended about it, because I think you have a right to design your game however you see fit.
You’re welcome to express your desire to see churches in the game but lets not get all offended, make assumptions about people’s motives and make this a personal attack.
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We actually left out bridges, despite them serving a critical functional purpose, for fear we might offend anti-bridge people. 
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First of all, I don’t think the rude comments above are representative for how most players think about this. It’s just people on the internet being people on the internet - which is sad, but that’s how it is.
Maybe Zentais comments pushed the discussion more in the direction of what place religion should or should not have in a video game. Which wasn’t really where the “where is the church?” question was coming from, I think. So there it was him overthinking, probably.
I don’t think any religious person (or anyone else for that matter) could be offended by the lack (or existence) of churches in a game. I mean it’s not like everyone was such a devout christian in the first place! 
(We’re talking about players placing a church building and the faith need meter goes to green - from what I hear that’s not a super accurate representation of christianity anyway lol.)
Like I said, you’re giving us a specific setting that evokes certain expectations (no matter your intentions) - that’s why for many there’s churches simply missing.
Your bridges comment is funny nonetheless, but looking at this like it was a debate about religion probably doesn’t help, because I don’t think that’s what this is. It’s about player expectations and individual associations with the medieval era.
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Haha, well yeah, I think that may be the majority but we’ve also gotten some pretty hate-filled, profanity-laced emails. We’ve literally been called “gay” for not including churches… even though we have never actually said we didn’t plan on adding religion or definitely weren’t adding churches.
It’s honestly been up in the air and we’re fairly surprised people are flipping out about it, considering the game is in early-access and obviously not finished.
BUT, that said, the game evolved from my originally thinking it might take place during the dark / early middle ages - original buildings were concepted with a distinctly Norse theme but then we felt like maybe that was over-done after some other releases / announcements. I also shifted the time period later / made it very ambiguous so that we could include later technology / economy to make the game more interesting. So again, it is not really supposed to be set in a specific time or place. It could even take place in the world of Grim Dawn, before the Aetherials… we talked about potentially adding a GD monster enemy DLC later.
So, I don’t know, some form of religion is coming. I don’t think it has to include churches and that’s not really where I was leaning but maybe we’ll include an option since so many people have expressed interest. 
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Thank you very much for your detailed answer. I’m offended by the fact that people get offended over everything all the time:) . I see it everyday and it pisses me off. I am in no way religious myself. In fact, I think religion is kind of insane, but hey, each to their own.
I’m also what you would call a left-wing vegan in the US, I suppose. So I have absolutely zero ideology behind my complaints. And I slaughter those cows without a touch of emotion comes spring.
Even still, I miss the churches SOLEY for the void they leave in the town scenery. I also have a game developer degree (3D artist), so I understand what you are talking about trying to prioritize what to implement before deadline.
I’m sorry for my bad attitude earlier. I’m normally a pretty nice guy. The game is absolutely amazing for the most part, so I suppose that’s why these little details bother me so. Also, being an artist, The look is super important to me. I’m also 45 btw, so the grumpiness is pretty developed.
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Thanks for the thoughtful reply and explaining where you’re coming from. I think we can do something that will make most people happy. Just need to get through all the early access fixes and adjustments, plus some optimization.
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Wow that is messed up, sorry to hear that. I guess EA has its advantages but this is definitely the dark side of it. And yeah, what I don’t get is how anyone could think this kind of behaviour was ok. In general some people seem ignorant to what EA even means.
Anyway it’s always interesting to hear from “behind the scenes” and your thought process (like the Journey Logs). I would have been totally up for a norse setting but I get that you wanna stand out from other releases. And tbh for the “classic” medieval setting (sorry, I know that’s not quite what you’re going for 
) FF delivers what other games didn’t. I now know what I’ve always missed in the Anno series: The organic and “realistic” feel of the cities. 
Speaking of “realistic” feel: if you were asking for a reason to consider (recognizable) church buildings, I think that would be it. I’m sure the audience coming from games with a more “traditional” medieval setting (Anno, Banished etc.) would appreciate it.
In all cultures there has been - in whatever shape or form - religion/ spirituality. So I’m glad to hear some form of religion is coming, because I feel it will make the FF world more “believable”, if you know what I mean.
Of course it’s always more complicated than “just” to add XY. To everything there’s more than just one aspect, like conceptual, gameplay, technical… I think that’s something that’s often overlooked. But I’m sure you’ll figure something out that will fit your vision as well as (most ) of us players wishes.
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I didn’t realize this had become so contentious. I’m not religious, pretty much agnostic, but I would welcome a religion system and buildings. It seems a spiritual instinct is hardwired into humanity. You can’t go anywhere in the world at any time in history and not find some sort of belief system and superstitions. Such beliefs might spark conflict from time to time, but they also inspire beauty and art. I think the world is richer for it and the game would be as well. Just my 2 cents on the issue. I’ve enjoyed reading the thread.
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Where is the Church?
Church into Town Center.
Calm down already. 
This is very exciting and I am happy to hear it!
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Yeah, part of it is we could have easily added a church where it fit into an existing system and all it did was raise desirability but I feel like that would be lame. So we held off hoping to do something a bit more unique and involved.
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Makes perfect sense. “Plop it down and forget about it” isn’t exactly the most exciting game mechanic. I mean it would still serve the function of immersion but I think that’s something you could always come back to in case a different solution - for whatever reason - doesn’t work out.
For it to make the gameplay better I would expect some interconnectedness though (is that a word)? Since you already got candles in the game at least there’s already an obvious currency for upkeep of religious buildings.
But of course that’s still missing complexity. Some sort of challenge there, sophistication. That’s why I brought up a possible combination of education and religion. (Even though that’s probably too historically accurate for your taste lol.)
In any case me personally I’d prefer something not supernatural (at this point I still don’t see FF in the fantasy genre). Something like adopting the faith of Demeter to get a bonus on harvest amounts feels kind of tacky and is mechanically just as boring as a bump to desirability. (Btw. no matter what, naming the religion wouldn’t even be necessary.)
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Remember that representation of people that want something and people that dont want something is probably very skewed. People that dont care, or are not interested in (in this case religion) which is currently non existant in the game, won’t go to a forum, to tell you that they want to keep it this way, because it is already the way they like it to be. I only ended up here because this discussion went viral on some gaming platforms. ^^ Same it was on forums of WoW or other games.
What i\m trying to say is: The “i want this changed”-people are always in a majority on the forums, but that doesn’t perse reflect the actual attitude of all your players. The silent majority, one might say. If you really want to know what your playerbase feelings are, you might want to push a survey in game. Which would be more representable, (still not a 100%, but it would be better).
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Wow, there’s actually articles written and published about this very thread!
Give a person a fish they eat for a day… Give a someone the internet and they…
Edit: They might not eat the fish for reasons
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Not necessarily a good thing. It delivers us Grade A whackjobs like this…
…Thanks PCGamer. Must have been a slow news day that you need to write articles directly referencing user-made game forum threads.
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Here is a short 5 minute video explaining why many players question the decision of removing the church from a medieval game. Personally I think it’s a really bad idea for a developer to let their personal beliefs and feelings interfere with fact, when they are portraying a historic era.
I think the game is great and it’s a shame that we even need to have this debate. Perhaps the “schools” could be part of a new “church mechanic”, since that would be much more true to how things really worked back then.
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