Soo... Let's talk about the ICO!

[Varyn765]

I'll go ahead and preface this post by saying: Yes, I am well aware that I have minimal time played on this game. I don't pretend to be an expert nor fully comprehend what the game was like prior to the update or during it's 'peak' or 'golden years.' I am simply a new player trying to gauge the changing nature of the game and see if it's worth putting time into long-term.


From what I've played of Squad thus far the game seems like that perfect mix between brutally unforgiving (and devoid of fun, IMO) games like ARMA but aren't anywhere near as 'plug and play' friendly like your Battlefield or CoD titles. Communication, use of cover, current loadout and many other factors all play a deciding factor in winning individual and large-scale engagements and that's a huge reason I got the game.

Smaller individual engagements seem super slow and tense, almost horror-adjacent in some encounters, but it doesn't ever become a slogging camp-fest where two people just sit around and wait forever. On the reverse the large-scale operations feel amazing until you check your map and realize you're the only squad left stuck in some bombed out apartment building with no help coming any time soon. The atmosphere and immersion are amazing and, at least from my limited experience, the current combat system feels like it's keeping the game slow-paced but steadily moving, if that makes any sense.

I've heard a ton of things about how vets with thousands of hours claim it's too "fast paced" in nature, meanwhile I've heard that the 'sub 1k hour players' simply like it because it means it isn't as high skilled as it used to be.


So what exactly did the ICO change overall and how as it effected the game at large? I still see plenty of players and servers, so it doesn't seem like the game is "dead" like a lot of posts claim. So is it still the same game it was, a sim-lite game with focus on teamplay and communication over individual skill and KDR, or has it changed drastically from what it used to be?

[Honey Badger [On Break for a whi]

OP, you are right about this part:

Originally posted by Varyn:

From what I've played of Squad thus far the game seems like that perfect mix between brutally unforgiving (and devoid of fun, IMO) games like ARMA but aren't anywhere near as 'plug and play' friendly like your Battlefield or CoD titles.

As this is what the developers have said years ago when people want to know what Squad is


In regards to what the ICO changed, the game now is pretty much similar to what we had before its introduction, the only thing is that the gunplay was treated a lot differently in terms of infantry combat, because it was a bit more simplified back then. Now a lot more care/focus has been put on it so you have to balance it now and take more careful choices about how you want to take on combat situations, which is a good thing in theory!

The main complaints you see everyone have, is that its simply unfun for them, now, this really depends on who you ask, i mean look at this thread and you'll get an idea of how wildly the opinions are with everyone here. The main issues people will tell you are very understandable and are annoying given we hadn't dealt with them prior to September, such as the Noodle arm syndrome where you can't hold your gun straight unless you're crouching/prone and holding shift, or the fact that some guns are really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and the balancing is off (7.62's have too much recoil and kick), or the fact that your soldier just can't hit anything if they sprint for 15 seconds.

Now, my opinion on the matter has always been: Good theory; Terrible execution. And don't let people who love the ICO on these discussions try to fool you into thinking the game was "COD-like" or that you could "laser beam" your shots, they're overexaggerating and they're wrong, the gameplay itself was and IS the same, the problems they talk about (Lone wolfing, people being able to kill an entire squad by themselves, etc.) are still very much present today just as it was a few months ago and to claim the ICO had "got rid of it" is very much wrong and naive.

My problems are that everything has been tweaked to an extreme, people will tell you "Just don't run everywhere" but I think you and I can both agree, some of these maps are pretty big, right? I don't fancy playing a walking simulator where I can help it, and vehicles aren't always available (And if they are, good luck convincing them to take you somewhere). Its one thing to choose between having to run and live but not be too accurate, or walk and be able to fire back more accurately, but its another thing entirely to have to choose between having to run and not be able to hit anything, and walk and be able to shoot close to your targets (This has been my experience).

And look, I've ♥♥♥♥ on the ICO a fair bit, but it has good concepts and theories, it wanted to make suppression more than just darkening the edges of your screen, thats great! Its a fantastic idea, now it blurs your screen too and throws your aim off a bit.

But then there's a problem: a 7.62mm bolt action rifle will do tremendously more suppression, than an LMG firing a constant stream of 5.56 to you, and to make matters worse, a 7.62mm bullet will always be a one-shot kill at close ranges, this was meant to 'balance' the insane recoil they have, but to me, its just unfun for both the player dying, and the one shooting.

And hey, I like the idea that infantry combat should be a bit more tactical, like I love that they gave marksmen magnified scopes, thats pretty awesome! Even the Australlian riflemen and SL's can get them too from 1x to 4x, I love that! So its not all bad, but the gunplay itself has been tweaked to a degree that it simply becomes boring, unfun, frustrating for some.

The game still has a lot of players, but keep in mind, they just had a sale, that will be a driving force. The game will still have focus on teamwork and co-ordination, but some or most of those people who could lead and make matches, have likely left / moved on, NOT ALL OF THEM, but some or most of them. You can already see discussions made about "Where are all the competent SL's?" because long time players of the game went "yep, not doing this" and left.

It still focuses teamplay over individual KD/R's, in fact, it never had any focus on that outside of the scoreboard at the end of the match, the core mechanics and gameplay never changed, but the infantry combat was changed to such a degree people find it unfun, and as I said in my review:

-infantry is just straight up horrible, and considering infantry is a main part of the game, that is not something you can ignore.

Infantry is a BIG part of the game, you need them to capture points and place radios and do logistic runs and the like, to me, this is easily 50% of the game right here, the developers messed with it and SOME people simply did not like it.

If you're coming in post-ICO and the mechanics haven't already annoyed you, I'm pretty confident you'll be fine playing the game. To me, if they just tweaked all the values back about 50%, the game would be a hell of a lot more fun for everyone. But the developers will not listen to you, or me, or the community, if there is one thing I can stress, play the game if you find it fun, but don't bother trying to convince the developers or anyone here if things start to go wrong and you start to think the games going in a bad direction. If the thousands of comments on their discord (Where they take suggestions from primarily) won't even get a peep from them outside of YTer exclusive interviews, then nothing will.

[ArtofWar]

All they needed to do was tone down everything a little bit more, keep the effect suppression has on your character but get rid of the blur, it's trash and completely unrealistic and is by far the worst thing about this overhaul. Keep the PiP scopes IF they do not effect performance(but they do). Squad 44 is a great example of suppression done right and the gunplay in that game is far better than squad right now as it's much closer to what we had before 6.0. They also should never have changed the way stamina worked a long time ago. Used to be when you ran out of stamina you had to walk until the bar was "out of the red" and then you could run again. That kept the pace of the game much slower and made you think about conserving it not because it effected your aim so much, which it still had an effect, but because you didn't want to not be able to run when you needed to. Again Squad 44 does it better but they give you a canteen which allows you to fill up your stam bar faster but again, slows the pace of the game down and your stam bar in Squad 44(Post Scriptum) fills much slower than in squad.

Back when squad was in the earliest days of early access players often stopped, went prone and let their bar fill up before they moved again. Once OWI changed it to where you had unlimited stamina the whole game went from stamina conservation so you could run when you needed to, to just running everywhere and once you got shot at you just went prone for a few seconds, got a little bit of stam back so you could aim and then pop out and shoot. If you didn't play back then you will never fully understand what I'm trying to say. We didn't even have vehicles back then. That's when the game was truly at it's best. Back then there were no established meta's, everyone was still learning the game and most squads really stuck together and actually listened to the SL's because they were the only one's that knew how to play the game.

[GutZ]

I couldn't agree more man. Perfectly said.

Im a new player as well, and so far have played 80 hours since ICO and many of those hours include multiple 6 hour runs per day.

Ive had the game in my library for years but like you said, nothing about it really appealed to me or stood out because it looked like a smaller version of arma 3 which I don't find too exhilarating to play compared to Sandstorm insurgency etc.

Ngl I've even enjoyed doing menial tasks in squad like logi runs because I understand the concept of a team win and how necessary it is to keep supplies on a fob for other players. The communication, the teamwork to survive together, and the group effort are what the devs wanted to advertise and highlight with ICO along with the visual effects involved in intense firefights and that is what pulled me in finally.

Loving it so far and looking forward to more hours today to keep learning what I can so I can contribute more into the team as we play.

[Chungal Grease]

Originally posted by 2AC Warlock:

So what exactly did the ICO change overall and how as it effected the game at large?

Bottom line the ICO punishes people that practiced for years and got really good at the game by essentially introducing diversity, equity and inclusion elements that homogenize the gameplay and then explaining it away as "realism" using lots of jargon and word salad.

If they were really serious about creating a more realistic experience instead of giving everyone granny noodle arms, blurry vision and tiny myopic weapon scope they'd punish the "shampoo, rinse & repeat" Zerg rushers by doing things like capping the amount of deaths per match and forcing players that don't wait for a medic to only respawn at the Main base. Instead with ICO you still have the headless chickens endlessly dying, respawning and forming an endless Conga line to the point.

ICO achieved none of its stated goals. Zero.

[ArtofWar]

Originally posted by Lance Rambert:

Originally posted by 2AC Warlock:

So what exactly did the ICO change overall and how as it effected the game at large?

Bottom line the ICO punishes people that practiced for years and got really good at the game by essentially introducing diversity, equity and inclusion elements that homogenize the gameplay and then explaining it away as "realism" using lots of jargon and word salad.

If they were really serious about creating a more realistic experience instead of giving everyone granny noodle arms, blurry vision and tiny myopic weapon scope they'd punish the "shampoo, rinse & repeat" Zerg rushers by doing things like capping the amount of deaths per match and forcing players that don't wait for a medic to only respawn at the Main base. Instead with ICO you still have the headless chickens endlessly dying, respawning and forming an endless Conga line to the point.

ICO achieved none of its stated goals. Zero.

This is 100% facts. I've said for years if they want to increase teamwork and punish the zerg rushers and the braindead lemmings then you have to punish dying in the game. I mean that's why they say they did the ICO right? To make you feel the "fear" right? Why don't you actually punish dying in the game? Take away the "give up" option. Force people to wait for medics and stay close to their team/squad. They could make it proximity based, if you are X meters away from team/squad member than spawn timers goes down by X, kinda thing. Make it to where you can still "give up" and respawn but the time in which you are allowed to respawn will be based on how close you are to the next team/squad mate. The farther away you are, the longer the timer, up to 3-5 minutes at the most. This is how you get player to work together. They also need to limit the amount of FOB's to 3 per team. Get rid of this garbage FOB spam meta and force teams to really think about FOB placement rather than just "honeycombing" the map with FOB's and not only that but actually defending them.

There are so many better ways to incentivize teamwork and slow down the pace of the game than what OWI did with the ICO. I've said it before but I'll say it again, they never should have given us "unlimited stamina". What I mean by that is back in squads EA days when you ran out of stamina you had to walk until it was "out of the red" and then you could run again for a short distance. This made players think about stamina conservation not because it threw off your aim(it did), but because you didn't wanna be caught with no stam because you couldn't run if you needed to and often times that would get you killed. It kept the pace of the game much slower because most players would take little breaks here and there and let their bar fill back up before they knew they were about to engage. Players often stuck together more because dying back then meant walking a long ways to get back into the fight because there were no vehicles back then and if you lost your rally or your spawn it was pretty much game over as you would need to spend the next 20 minutes running from main again. Anyone who played squad in its earliest days will tell you that we had way better teamwork and coordination back then.

[Elon Mosque the Space Jihadi]

Originally posted by ArtofWar:

This is 100% facts. I've said for years if they want to increase teamwork and punish the zerg rushers and the braindead lemmings then you have to punish dying in the game. I mean that's why they say they did the ICO right? To make you feel the "fear" right? Why don't you actually punish dying in the game? Take away the "give up" option.

They also need to limit the amount of FOB's to 3 per team. Get rid of this garbage FOB spam meta and force teams to really think about FOB placement rather than just "honeycombing" the map with FOB's and not only that but actually defending them.

While I disagree about the "fob spam" (its a stand in for larger pushes and flanks that cant be achieved with 50 people in a server, and is a huge part of the rts aspect of the game) limiting the give up button is a great idea. There are situations where you cant wait a full 5 mins to respawn, but adding like a 30-60 second timer on the give up button would alleviate the issue of new players just insta giving up and wasting tickets.

[Greg]

There's things to like. I like that you lose sight picture when you stand up from crouching, if only momentarily. Whenever people talk about 'defenders advantage' in the context of ICO I think about this. This was such a staple of thoughtless defensive tactics, poking up over impenetrable cover and taking shots and shuffling left and right so you always pop up somewhere unpredictable. Stupid stuff, good riddance.

I'm honestly most skeptical of the *purpose* of ICO, which seems to come from a conclusion that that basic shooter mechanics are fundamentally incompatible with teamwork. That's probably not true.

I think the devs have identified some real issues but are tired of futzing with the respawn rules and therefore have moved on to find some other part of the game to break

Originally posted by Honey Badger:

But then there's a problem: a 7.62mm bolt action rifle will do tremendously more suppression, than an LMG firing a constant stream of 5.56 to you, and to make matters worse, a 7.62mm bullet will always be a one-shot kill at close ranges, this was meant to 'balance' the insane recoil they have, but to me, its just unfun for both the player dying, and the one shooting.

And hey, I like the idea that infantry combat should be a bit more tactical, like I love that they gave marksmen magnified scopes, thats pretty awesome! Even the Australlian riflemen and SL's can get them too from 1x to 4x, I love that! So its not all bad, but the gunplay itself has been tweaked to a degree that it simply becomes boring, unfun, frustrating for some.

Yeah this is the kind of goofy stuff I don't like about it. tbh 7.62 recoil being crazy was an issue before it's just been magnified by the ICO. Honestly the way damage and recoil work has always been weird and unrealistic. Verdict: clearly needs more overhaul

[Opachki]

ICO sucks

[Aegmar]

Originally posted by Menstruozny geniy:

Your respawn timer increases +10 second every time you die. Starting from 30 sec.

This not the worst idea. Might at least cause some players who always give up instantly to change behaviour. Many would probably still not care and just switch servers as soon as respawn timers get too long.

[Aqua Tang]

They need to keep suppression and fix movement and aiming the way it was. Yes heavy breathing makes you less accurate but not as bad as it they made it. It's just annoying and doesn't add anything of value to the game. Suppression is a tactical improvement everything else was them micromanaging how "firefights play out" and they outright did a bad job at that.

[Jax]

ICO is the worst patch ever, since this crap i stoped playing the game, not funny anymore with this horrible shaking all time gunplay

[LeMoNz]

The ICO is the most gross representation of Weapons you can come across in Video Games.

The Devs want Squad to be played like an Arma 3 MILSIM against AI. Slow and deliberate unlike how fast paced and immediate squad is played despite the fact that squad and how it's played has not had any changes in years that would necessitate the need to change how you play, even the ICO who's aim was to change it has done absolutely nothing.

The ICO does not work because it's aim was to achieve something that Squad will never Achieve nor does it accurately represent the real handling and use of weapons.

Some people actually have the privilege of experience and the ICO portrays its Weapons as being exceptionally heavier than they actually are, less accurate (Specifically Machineguns), they think that Shouldering a weapon to look down your optic especially seen on at Kits is like throwing a 100 Pound log onto your shoulder (Its Not).

I won't pull the simple ICO Lovers sucked Pre-ICO but rather anyone who supports/enjoys the ICO just does not know what they are talking about in regards to the use of weapons or how Infantry actually Train/Fight and behave and it is crystal clear.

[Slim]

It was a good change. The suppression works now. Fire and move seems to work. Before you could not suppress. People would simply stand up and dome you. Still possible, but it's much harder to do. Fire superiority is a big deal. You can save a vic by shooting an AT right before he fires, throwing his aim off. This was not possible before.

What they took from the CSGO twitchy style of aiming skill they put back into the doctrines of combat and real life tactics. People are upset they can't play like it's battlefield, but they don't know they can play this game with real life tactics and it actually works.

Now more people are encouraged to use tactics, because you can be a pro CSGO player and still get pinned down hard by a rifle team, even if you get the jump on them, they can return fire and immediately blur you and force you down, or make you waste your mag.

[Idiot Kid]

Originally posted by Varyn_TV:

I'll go ahead and preface this post by saying: Yes, I am well aware that I have minimal time played on this game. I don't pretend to be an expert nor fully comprehend what the game was like prior to the update or during it's 'peak' or 'golden years.' I am simply a new player trying to gauge the changing nature of the game and see if it's worth putting time into long-term.


From what I've played of Squad thus far the game seems like that perfect mix between brutally unforgiving (and devoid of fun, IMO) games like ARMA but aren't anywhere near as 'plug and play' friendly like your Battlefield or CoD titles. Communication, use of cover, current loadout and many other factors all play a deciding factor in winning individual and large-scale engagements and that's a huge reason I got the game.

Smaller individual engagements seem super slow and tense, almost horror-adjacent in some encounters, but it doesn't ever become a slogging camp-fest where two people just sit around and wait forever. On the reverse the large-scale operations feel amazing until you check your map and realize you're the only squad left stuck in some bombed out apartment building with no help coming any time soon. The atmosphere and immersion are amazing and, at least from my limited experience, the current combat system feels like it's keeping the game slow-paced but steadily moving, if that makes any sense.

I've heard a ton of things about how vets with thousands of hours claim it's too "fast paced" in nature, meanwhile I've heard that the 'sub 1k hour players' simply like it because it means it isn't as high skilled as it used to be.


So what exactly did the ICO change overall and how as it effected the game at large? I still see plenty of players and servers, so it doesn't seem like the game is "dead" like a lot of posts claim. So is it still the same game it was, a sim-lite game with focus on teamplay and communication over individual skill and KDR, or has it changed drastically from what it used to be?

The base ICO was honestly pretty bad, anytime you were below 75% stamina and you couldn't aim for ♥♥♥♥. That said, they recently updated ICO and made the weapon sway MUCH better. Anyone else still ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about ICO at this point needs to go play hell let loose or something else, this isn't battlefield.

[SpunkyMonkey]

The main thing I'd say the ICO has done that I've literally never seen another video game do (not hyperbole) is change their main handling mechanics 7 years into the game's life. For context Apex legends is 5 years old; now imagine if they tweaked their mechanics, not individual weapon stats/handling, but the engine itself. Squad did this, but 2 years from now if you're Apex. It's criminal.