More options is (almost) always a good thing, and Stardock is all about letting the player customize his experience, so I think there's a good chance that this feature will make it in a future patch.

Don't simplify MP. Simple as that.

If people want to play a balanced 1 vs 1 game, then they can turn off w/e they want. But some people are going to want to play a more unpredictable multiplayer game too.

Yes,  this sounds great as an option, but not the only one for MP.

Yeah, I totally agree. I really hope they allow for a 'fuller' mp experience as a quick skirmish isn't really what I want, please don't dumb down the MP!!!! thats why I am buying it. Co-op or longer style of playing with friends for me would be great. I did hear about perpertual servers, did this mean there is the chance of a perpetual world server setup so people can hop in and play then hop off. Obviously this might mean your kingdom gets wrecked while your away but im sure there are ways to negate this. I would love to see this feature as my friends are often on at differnt times to me.

Another vote for complex multiplayer. If I wanted dumbed down multiplayer, I could find it in a thousand other places.

Couldn't it be modded in? 

I hope so, Windexglow, but as I understand it custom servers aren't going to be available at release, so no MP mods?  I really wish the interviewer had followed up on the answer.

I find this other Q&A troublesome as well:

Out of the box, Elemental’s multiplayer will be essentially skirmish on fixed maps that have been pre-balanced (i.e. not randomly generated). 

Egads.  I have RTS for that kind of matchup, that's not what I buy a TBS for.  I was hoping/expecting something along the lines of Civ IV MP (i.e. the actual game).

So it's *sounding* like a stripped down, skirmish-based setup with no random maps.  Ouch.  Well, it'll make waiting for Tuesday easier I guess. I hope I'm blowing all of this out of proportion and that I find I'm wrong when the game releases, but if not it could really kill the game for me.

I wouldn't call it "dumbed down" either. From what he said it's just streamlining the game for multiplayer. I know gamers have a fear of the word "streamlining."

If I was playing online against strangers I would probably want to use the balanced version but if I'm on my LAN I'd probably want the single player version. Hopefully it's optional.

Nah don't waste resources on MP. Leave it like you thought it up and continue to support and create the single player experience beyond your wildest dreams.

Which, I think, is the right decision because the majority of people who play turn-based 4x strategy games play single player.  You can't just take the single player experience and add multiplayer because that doesn't produce optimal gameplay (even though some people think this is what they want), and the last thing Stardock wants to hear is how dull, lethargic, and poorly balanced online play is.  There is going to be some compromise one way or the other, and Stardock is trying to make the one that will have the most positive benefits.

Yeah, this is another thing to be concerned about - I didn't see the 'fixed maps' thing. Multiplayer Elemental shouldn't just be modeled after Starcraft (fast play and fixed maps). I do take some comfort from the phrase 'out of the box', which implies that full random maps may well be added in later.

I certainly respect you opinion in this regard. If the majority really do want single player and nothing but, then fine. All I ask is that Stardock gives the tools to the Multiplayer Community to customise their experience to their own satisfaction... And knowing Stardock, it will. We've already seen some of the incredible tools on offer. Its just a shame not to see a little more variation, such as no random maps, out of the box and apparently only skirmish play. 

I think as Psychoravin put it, I'm not one of the "I'm better than anyone" crowd. I just want to have a fun experience with friends. Surely there's no harm in that? The game will only continue to grow and expand if the Multiplayer community is enabled to do what it wants with the game, and surely there's no harm in that either?

Oh well, I guess we'll just have to see!

This post uses some bad logic which kind of epitomizes the problem here. Yes, it's true that most people are in it for the single player. But those people are then by definition not the customer base for multiplayer - you want to design multiplayer for those people who actually want to play multiplayer. It's the same thing for modding tools - most of us aren't going to use them, and all the showing of the code used for modding that Brad has done doesn't interest most of us at all. But he's doing exactly the right thing, because that stuff DOES interest that subset of people who want to mod.

The point is that multiplayer is for the people who want multiplayer, not for the lowest common denominator that doesn't care about it. It's condescending to say that people essentially don't know what they want and what they will enjoy. I'm someone who enjoyed three day sessions of Hotseat MOO2 and HOMM, and this was simply the single player experience with added multiplayer, in a far more klugy format than Elemental could ever be. Those folks who actually want to play multiplayer tend to be more of those who enjoy the big messy hairball of the game, not those who are interested in 'streamlining'.

By the way, I would be delighted to be wrong, and to discover that the streamlined multiplayer is in fact awesome, and that what has been removed is simply stuff unnecessary or inappropriate for multiplayer. What has me be nervous/suspicious of what Brad says is fun in multiplayer is that he doesn't seem to be someone who particularly likes big, hairy, turn-based multiplayer games, and thus he may be speaking from a desire for speed and simplicity that I don't share. We shall see!