Ian Fischer's thoughts about the latest AoE2 suggestions

Ian Fischer, one of the lead designers of AoE2, tells us what he thinks about the latest suggestions (from June 21) - note that these are his personal opinions and may very from the views of the rest of the design team.

> dividing the map into shires that have to be defended.

[Ian Fischer] "This is an "AoE mod", a new way to play the game. We're looking into several of these at this time."

> harmful weather and famines.

[Ian Fischer] "We have toyed with these and will continue to look at them but my personal feeling about this is that if you make it strong enough to have an impact on the game then you also create the possibility of having a player get beaten by a random event. I don't think that this is a great thing -- if I get beat I want it to be buy my opponent, not by a random event. If we make it truly random, it also has the potential of crushing an opponent who was already behind."

> voice communication with other players

[Ian Fischer] "This technology (talking with other players over the internet) is still fairly young and, from what I've seen of it, the performance isn't that great. I'm certain that a few of our programmers could work on this and make improvements but then they wouldn't be working on what they are now. So the question then becomes -- would you rather we work on the game or internet phone technology? :)"

> keeps as an integral entity in the game, upgrades either to stronghold or castles (with different benefits).

"[Ian Fischer] You got it. You'll see something like this in the game."

> non-siege units can no longer damage buildings with their weapons (but they can put them on fire).

[Ian Fischer] "We've toyed with various versions of this. From what I've seen, fires become too much of a micromanagement thing (you've got to do something to put them out, right -- otherwise what is the point?). And they also make it very easy for a player to crush another once in his town -- I get in and set everything on fire which is bad enough but now you have to run your villagers around trying to put the fires out so my archers have some nice target practice. As for the siege weapon thing -- it just isn't much fun to have units that can do no damage to buildings. However, siege units will do far more damage to buildings."


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