Thanks for the replies!
As I said in my first post, I was fully expecting people to go "this isn't the Sims, fool, I want to shoot people!", and again, that's fine. I never said that you could buy golden sinks and Persian rugs like it was a social 2D game on Facebook. When I mentioned house customization, I was thinking it would be more minimalistic, the concept of having a house being the key element, not actually implementing a Sims-like mini-game. At the very least, I still stand firmly on the concept of outfit housing. Also, if you could elaborate a little on why an election-based leadership wouldn't work, please do