"What the... ?" a.k.a. "Battlefield Bad Company 2 Concerns"

I've been playing the demo for a while now, and as excited as I am for Bad Company 2, there is something not sitting with me.  It's hard to articulate, partially because it's a demo of one level and one playlist type (one I never intend to play again), but also because I feel like there are bigger design elements that are awry. 

Those who haven't tried it, it's a one-sided objective based gametype where the offensive team tries to destroy 2 objectives that the defense has nestled in to defend.  If both are destroyed, then the defense falls back to another portion of the map to defend 2 new objective points.  This continues until the time expires, resulting in a win for the defense, or all the objective have been destroyed, creating a win for the offense.  Objectives are generally destroyed by offense planting bombs at the aforementioned locations.  not surprisingly, the defense can protect their locations by defusing the bombs.  A simple enough premise, putting a really neat context in the world.  It's not too much different from variants found in other shooters, but the moving of the playable area in the map by the defense falling back, really creates a cool mood for the game.

Bad Company's desire to see things exploded and fall over, really makes for a rough time.  More than one match was lost by the other team hanging back (way back) with vehicles pummeling their attack locations.  At first, I thought nothing of it - "fine, go ahead and keep killing me, you'll never capture this point from way up there." Wrong! Apparently, you can destroy objectives by destroying it externally as well.  No need to fight your way up to that point, just camp a tank on top of the hill and give it to em'.  The class based weapon load-out isn't helping either.  That far back from where we get to choose to spawn as defenders, we have no real effective way to stop those tanks, or to kill the vehicle fixing engineer who is just sitting behind his friendly tank, well out of harm's way, who is perpetually healing his tank making it nearly invincible.

Normally, I'd blame this on me/us.  We love to bitch about getting our butts kicked, but aren't there some design problems happening?  Maybe I'm not understanding something about the game type.  the classes feel balanced, not too many people running around as only one class.  The maps feel pretty well designed, multiple ways to enter in an objective point, not to mention the ability to rip down a wall with your grenade launcher if you so desire.  It seems like some simple choices or tweaks could really make the difference.  Like... not respawning vehicles.  Or not putting capture locations in buildings that could be completely demolished.

It worries me that this gameplay style is gonna effect my first (and essentially only) love in the Battlefield series, Conquest mode.  Conquest mode allows for some great ebb and flow between offense and defense, really making team communication pay off.  If conquest points could be captured, or removed off a map by completely blowing them up, then the game is just gonna turn into some free-for-all sloppy mess of grenade launcher chaos.  Again, this is just a concern, but I think it's a fair question.

I know there are some huge lifelong Battlefield fans amongst us, but if this is what the gameplay boils down to, I don't understand what all the hype is about.  I loved Bad Company 1 for it's level of destruction, but somehow, I have to assume through brilliant map design, demoing a majority of a building didn't seem to effect the overall outcome of a game, only how individual skirmishes on the battlefield played out. 

Also, Enemy and my mind's were blown when we checked the leaderboards on our 360s.  At the time we checked (which I can only assume has increased since then) there was a player in the top 10 worldwide, that had clocked in over 245 hours in the demo.  That seems high but let me break down the math for you. The demo has only been out for about 4 weeks now.  Giving him the benefit of the doubt, and assuming he hasn't played at all since we last checked in on him, that means he has been playing for just under 9 hours a day, every day.  I'm less worried about the time consumption, but what the particular obsession is with this game.  It's only one map! and it's only one gametype!  What could possibly be happening that causes this dude to spend more time on a single level and single gametype than most of us spend on a full-time job? Yikes.