I know, I know, this is has been discussed to death.
It seems that people are making alot of claims about IO and many people are talking past each other. I would like to attempt to seperate two different questions about the new IO mode.
1) Is IO a good game?
2) Should IO be removed from the game?
1) Hard to say. I've been playing it alot lately and its been pretty fun. Not perfect but fun. Of course, IO is a new toy, and new toys usually seem better than old toys when you first get them. Maybe IO will get old fast, who knows. I can understand that alot of people just dislike BF2 without vehicles. I don't play in vehicles much but they can certainly make for very exciting and fun situations. (Nothing like taking down a chopper with a machine gun) Likewise, BF2 was originally designed and balanced to have vehicles in it. Taking vehicles out but changing nothing else can (and may in fact have) unbalanced game play, i.e. medic is overpowered. Unbalance does not make for a fun game. Wheter or not IO is a good game will have to come down to personal preference
2) Should IO be removed from the game? Here is the problem. People seem to assume that if you give an argument that IO is not a good game mode then that entails that it should not be an option. Of course this is crazy. If you believe that IO is not a fun game you should not play it. If the patch made it such that all games had to be IO that would be a different story. However, IO is an option. You don't have to play it. Explaining why you don't like IO is NOT the same as giving a reason to remove it.
So what are there reasons people give for removing IO?
-Stats- People play IO just because it is easier to get stats. Good people play on normal servers, point farmers play IO. Furthmore, bad player get better stats playing IO than good players. Therefore, IO should be removed because it destroys the ranking system.
-I don't find this convincing at all. First off, even if we accept that you can get better stats playing IO, this does not mean that everyone who likes IO likes it for the stats. Furthmore, point imbalance existed before IO. On some maps its easier to get points. This does not mean that those maps should be eliminated. It means that we should recognize that the ranking is not a perfect indication of skill. The same should apply to IO. If IO players have higher ranks with less skill, well, is that really so bad?
-ruining non IO servers- The second argument is that everyone is going to flock to IO servers in order to gain rank faster, thereby reducing the number of non-IO games to an unacceptable number. Once again, I don't think this arguement holds up. Looking at other posts and polls, and the server list in game, alot of people are playing non-IO. I find it very unlikely that non-IO servers will in the future be depleted because everyone playing is farming points in IO games.
Love it or hate, I think IO is here to stay. Discussion of the problems with IO could be benificial (who knows). However, I have yet to see a good reason for its removal.
It seems that people are making alot of claims about IO and many people are talking past each other. I would like to attempt to seperate two different questions about the new IO mode.
1) Is IO a good game?
2) Should IO be removed from the game?
1) Hard to say. I've been playing it alot lately and its been pretty fun. Not perfect but fun. Of course, IO is a new toy, and new toys usually seem better than old toys when you first get them. Maybe IO will get old fast, who knows. I can understand that alot of people just dislike BF2 without vehicles. I don't play in vehicles much but they can certainly make for very exciting and fun situations. (Nothing like taking down a chopper with a machine gun) Likewise, BF2 was originally designed and balanced to have vehicles in it. Taking vehicles out but changing nothing else can (and may in fact have) unbalanced game play, i.e. medic is overpowered. Unbalance does not make for a fun game. Wheter or not IO is a good game will have to come down to personal preference
2) Should IO be removed from the game? Here is the problem. People seem to assume that if you give an argument that IO is not a good game mode then that entails that it should not be an option. Of course this is crazy. If you believe that IO is not a fun game you should not play it. If the patch made it such that all games had to be IO that would be a different story. However, IO is an option. You don't have to play it. Explaining why you don't like IO is NOT the same as giving a reason to remove it.
So what are there reasons people give for removing IO?
-Stats- People play IO just because it is easier to get stats. Good people play on normal servers, point farmers play IO. Furthmore, bad player get better stats playing IO than good players. Therefore, IO should be removed because it destroys the ranking system.
-I don't find this convincing at all. First off, even if we accept that you can get better stats playing IO, this does not mean that everyone who likes IO likes it for the stats. Furthmore, point imbalance existed before IO. On some maps its easier to get points. This does not mean that those maps should be eliminated. It means that we should recognize that the ranking is not a perfect indication of skill. The same should apply to IO. If IO players have higher ranks with less skill, well, is that really so bad?
-ruining non IO servers- The second argument is that everyone is going to flock to IO servers in order to gain rank faster, thereby reducing the number of non-IO games to an unacceptable number. Once again, I don't think this arguement holds up. Looking at other posts and polls, and the server list in game, alot of people are playing non-IO. I find it very unlikely that non-IO servers will in the future be depleted because everyone playing is farming points in IO games.
Love it or hate, I think IO is here to stay. Discussion of the problems with IO could be benificial (who knows). However, I have yet to see a good reason for its removal.
(And to a lesser degree those who admit they play for points instead of having fun or winning and like IO because of how many points they can get.)
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