Thoughts on why Supreme Commander failed.

[Khyron320]

I have played at least 250 supcom 1 games. Here is what i think

#1 the interface for finding games is trash, a non integrated game browser? Really? No game on the pc should have a 2nd application you launch outside of the game to find games... its aggravating.
#2 the "community", the supcom community took an elitist turn a while ago with their "player tracker tool" what they did was essentially make sure any newcomer was unwelcome by refusing to join games with "noobs" and ever so slowly shrunk their community into nothing. So good job with that.
#3 that guy with the single core cpu that joins your games.... I cant tell you how many times i ragequit a 3vs3 because somebody joined with a really crappy pc... Instead of playertracking they should have implemented a pc min req filter for games. Because a slow pc in supcom can make a 45min game extend to 3 hours 45 minutes.
#4 poor mod support, the mod system was just silly. The was 1 mod in particular that its whole purpose was to download dependencies for other mods to work? REALLY?

And this is from somebody who really loved this game. No game has ever come close to the massive scale that supcom 1 has achieved.

As for Supcom2... they just shrunk its scale too far for my liking.

 

[Anteaus]

The fact that the game was released in March for $50-60 and can now be had for $5-$10 brand new is in itself considered a failure.

Your talking about Supreme Commander 2, which I agree was a failure. There is no debate about that. However, the conversation above is about Supreme Commander 1. In addition, patching woes aside Forged Alliance improved on what was already a great game, making it one of the best LAN party games released. Again, hardly a failure. Imperfect I'll give you, but no game is perfect.

 

[lord_emperor]

Supreme commander was boring.

None of the units had character or distinctiveness, they came down to:

______ robot, strong against _______ robot, weak against ______ robot.

It was fun for about two games making swarms of a thousand spider bots and watching the bullets fly.

 

[Anteaus]

Supreme commander was boring.

None of the units had character or distinctiveness, they came down to:

______ robot, strong against _______ robot, weak against ______ robot.

It was fun for about two games making swarms of a thousand spider bots and watching the bullets fly.

I guess it depends on whether you prefer fast or turtle play. Supreme Commander caters to the older turtle play crowds who like to spend 45 minutes building up bases and defenses before sending massed armies to do battle. This is in opposition to the fast "level 1 unit" rush you see in Starcraft and newer C&C games. SupCom would be boring to these sort of players, since it fulfills a different scope of gameplay. The units didn't have personalities because they were tools. The commander is meant to be the personality. In other words, if you love Starcraft style RTS then you probably won't enjoy SupCom as much.

I do disagree with your rock,paper, scissors mentality, because pretty much every RTS released uses that. This isn't a slight again SupCom. Starcraft 2 is blatently guilty of this. Where would the strategy be if there was no proper counter to anything? I would agree that maybe that could have put a bit more effort into individual units, but at release it was already pushing the limits of machines at the time. It is almost 4 years old.

 

[evident]

I lost attention after playing this game for about 5 hours. It just didnt appeal to me for some reason. I think it was also overhyped as well

 

[Nox51]

I played a lot of supcom 1. I reckon the main issues were these:

-the economy system. You have a flow into a buffer system with a flow out spent on units and buildings. If flow in<flow out you start using up the buffer to keep going at max speed until it runs out. Pretty simple no? WRONG! Too difficult for the a lot of the retards that play games these day , used to instant gratification.Apparently they could get their brains around it.

-gpgnet. It sucked ass big time. Made baby Jesus cry. Killed kittens with a vengeance. You got the point.

As for the battles, there was both micro and macro. if you played enough you should know how important the commander was on the battlefield to deal with t1 and t2 units. Aurora micro ? remember? Dancing between hoplites and mongeese to make sure to kite your enemy in such a way he doesn't even land a hit on you? Ensuring radar coverage?

Also you have to remember the whole point was to amass a lot of units and have massive army battles. That was one of the features of the game.


And let us not forget one of the best things of the game. Strategic zoom. See the whole picture at once and order everything then zoom in for precision work. How I miss you!

 

[lothar]

Your talking about Supreme Commander 2, which I agree was a failure. There is no debate about that. However, the conversation above is about Supreme Commander 1. In addition, patching woes aside Forged Alliance improved on what was already a great game, making it one of the best LAN party games released. Again, hardly a failure. Imperfect I'll give you, but no game is perfect.

I assumed he was talking about the entire series "in general" not necessarily only part I.

Yeah, Supreme Commander 2 dropped from $50-60 in March to $5-10 about five or six months later proving how much of a failure it was.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I guess it depends on whether you prefer fast or turtle play. Supreme Commander caters to the older turtle play crowds who like to spend 45 minutes building up bases and defenses before sending massed armies to do battle. This is in opposition to the fast "level 1 unit" rush you see in Starcraft and newer C&C games. SupCom would be boring to these sort of players, since it fulfills a different scope of gameplay. The units didn't have personalities because they were tools. The commander is meant to be the personality. In other words, if you love Starcraft style RTS then you probably won't enjoy SupCom as much.

I do disagree with your rock,paper, scissors mentality, because pretty much every RTS released uses that. This isn't a slight again SupCom. Starcraft 2 is blatently guilty of this. Where would the strategy be if there was no proper counter to anything? I would agree that maybe that could have put a bit more effort into individual units, but at release it was already pushing the limits of machines at the time. It is almost 4 years old.

You have some massive misconceptions of what Starcraft 2 is like.

 

[Anteaus]

You have some massive misconceptions of what Starcraft 2 is like.

Not really. From the single player side, Starcraft (1&2) are highly scripted games. From the multiplayer side, both have been balanced to be played at the competitive level. This means that gameplay is designed to be quick and well balanced to the point that, although sides are different, they are ultimately on equal footing. I've played both games for many hours online, and rarely does a game last over 15 minutes because people just want that quick kill. I'm not putting down these games though. Both are excellent games and Blizzard is a RTS master.

Anyways, regardless of which of the three factions you play, each has units that are "anti-infantry", "anti-vehicle", "anti-air", etc. Sure, the units might have more personality, but its the same type of balance SupCom has...even if SupCom doesn't do it with the same level of flare. But again, the larger map sizes in SupCom is many times larger than the largest SC/SC2 maps.

 

[jlee]

I loved Total Annihilation, but Supreme Commander didn't have the same feel to me - seemed more complicated somehow..I hardly even played it.

 

[Maximilian]

Supcom was great fun, very cool game but the multiplayer was fricking dire, mainly because of GPG.net but also because the community in my experience were arse holes. In a 2v2 i wasent quite as good as my ally... so he recycled all my stuff and used the resources he recycled my entire army to build a bunch of fatboys of his own which he then force fired my base with I was not impressed to say the least lol.

 

[Nintendesert]

I like SC for the single player, screw around and play a skirmish match against some AI for a change of pace. I liked building the cannons etc. and big guns and I liked the way the aircraft worked.

It wasn't the greatest RTS but it had it's moments.

 

[lord_emperor]

I guess it depends on whether you prefer fast or turtle play. Supreme Commander caters to the older turtle play crowds who like to spend 45 minutes building up bases and defenses before sending massed armies to do battle. This is in opposition to the fast "level 1 unit" rush you see in Starcraft and newer C&C games. SupCom would be boring to these sort of players, since it fulfills a different scope of gameplay. The units didn't have personalities because they were tools. The commander is meant to be the personality. In other words, if you love Starcraft style RTS then you probably won't enjoy SupCom as much.

I do disagree with your rock,paper, scissors mentality, because pretty much every RTS released uses that. This isn't a slight again SupCom. Starcraft 2 is blatently guilty of this. Where would the strategy be if there was no proper counter to anything? I would agree that maybe that could have put a bit more effort into individual units, but at release it was already pushing the limits of machines at the time. It is almost 4 years old.

Actually I hate Starcraft and Warcraft because of the extreme rock-paper-scissors stance Blizzard used in those games and the one-sided nature of competitive matches. Of the handful of ladder matches I played in Starcraft 2 I lost or won in under five minutes, and the game was probably determined in the first two.

The RTS games I enjoyed are not surprisingly those that are somewhere in the middle, like Age of Empires 2, Command & Conquer Generals and Warhammer.

I'm waiting some someone to come out with a new RTS that makes aggression or defensiveness a valid choice and where tactics matter beyond micro'ing units to focus fire.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I agree I was never good enough to pull my weight on line so I always played skirmish. Yes the factions were all similar and the units real similar I'd buy a Sup Com 3 assuming it's not like Sup Com 2. Anyone up for a sup com fight night?

 

[Fenixgoon]

double post, woot!

 

[Fenixgoon]

Not really. From the single player side, Starcraft (1&2) are highly scripted games. From the multiplayer side, both have been balanced to be played at the competitive level. This means that gameplay is designed to be quick and well balanced to the point that, although sides are different, they are ultimately on equal footing. I've played both games for many hours online, and rarely does a game last over 15 minutes because people just want that quick kill. I'm not putting down these games though. Both are excellent games and Blizzard is a RTS master.

Anyways, regardless of which of the three factions you play, each has units that are "anti-infantry", "anti-vehicle", "anti-air", etc. Sure, the units might have more personality, but its the same type of balance SupCom has...even if SupCom doesn't do it with the same level of flare. But again, the larger map sizes in SupCom is many times larger than the largest SC/SC2 maps.

if you've watched any pro-level starcraft play, plenty of games reach Tier3 units. most of the games only take 15 minutes because these guys are so goddamn good, not necessarily because they massed zerglings and kekeke'd their way to a win (though yes that does happen too - equally as valid a strategy, even if it is considered cheese)

 

[skace]

People often believe SC2 matches are determined by the first victory. But this is often because a lot of players will give up at the sign of any setbacks. I've played in games where setbacks and rushes were overcome and the lesser player ended up winning. A turtler can defend against a rusher, however a turtler is a distinct disadvantage long term if they aren't expanding their resource pool.

The problem is that most people confuse the "peaceful builder" with the "turtler". A turtler knows how to defend properly, a peaceful builder or a techer, just doesn't build any offense or defense at all, and then bitches when they get rolled while continually teching up.

 

[heat901]

I wouldn't say SC1 failed I would just say it didn't do that well. I think one of major problems was that for its time it took a good machine to run the game and even then after a long game or huge map it could bring some of the good machines to its knees. Probably one of the reason Sc2(Starcraft2) and Sc1(Starcraft1) were as popular as they are was because they could work on any system and run at ease for the most part.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

i thought SC was quite boring.

Same here. Total Annihilation was fun, but SC just felt...boring. I loved the battles in TA where you could actually see how it was progressing based on where the wreckages of units were.

 

[ibex333]

Supreme Commander failed (to me) because it wasn't spectacular in any way whatsoever. It was fun, but only briefly, and even then it wasn't fun enough.

This.

SupCom failed not because of it's poor multiplayer system. I didnt even get that far. It actualy did "just suck ass".

Total Annihilation felt EPIC when I played it. Supcom just feels bland and flat despite the sheer variety of units. Story is very lame. TA's story was actually descent, especially for it's time. Not the case with SupCom.

Many little details that are necessary, IMHO, were left out. for example the vehicles wheels and the tank's tracks DO NOT move. Units glide on the ground, they dont roll/drive. For me, such little things are a huge turnoff, becuase when I see it, it shows me that the devs desrespect me as a player/customer. It shows me their lack of care for what I want. I mean.. Why pay attention to detail right? "The customer is just a dumb brick, and he will swallow what is given to him or hopefully not notice because he is just too dumb..."

See, this is exactly one of the reasons why I will take CoH or DoW over Supcom any day of the week.

Perhaps the worst thing about SupCom is the insane amount of time it takes to build stuff. It takes so long to build a superweapon, that I can actually start and finish a game in Command and Conquer 3 during that time... Ridiculous.

 

[shortylickens]

Also I just realized the fucking game is unfairly difficult on Hard. Aeon especially on the final mission.
I used a trainer to give me instant build and I still cant win. I cant build tier 4 units fast enough to attack and get through, nor heavy shields to protect myself from the hundreds of battleships assaulting my commander.

Thats a pretty fucked up system. How the hell did they expect people to win without cheating?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I stilled liked it overall, I did like C&C3 more. I'd still love to try an 8 player match with people who aren't asses.

 

[Sureshot324]

If you ever really get into playing an RTS online competitively you realize that if you have to spend 15 mins building up your base every match before you fight, that's a bad thing. Building up your base isn't multiplayer, there is no interaction with the other player. Once you've played quite a bit and have your build orders down, it's the same every time and it's boring. Even in Starcraft 2 I hate those boring ~3 mins at the start of every match where I have to do the same thing every time.

An opening in an RTS is like an opening in chess. But in chess, after like the 2nd move your moves are going to be dictated by what your opponent does. You can't expect to learn a 15 move opening and then be able to do that every time. Why should an RTS be any different?

 

[shortylickens]

If you ever really get into playing an RTS online competitively you realize that if you have to spend 15 mins building up your base every match before you fight, that's a bad thing. Building up your base isn't multiplayer, there is no interaction with the other player. Once you've played quite a bit and have your build orders down, it's the same every time and it's boring. Even in Starcraft 2 I hate those boring ~3 mins at the start of every match where I have to do the same thing every time.

An opening in an RTS is like an opening in chess. But in chess, after like the 2nd move your moves are going to be dictated by what your opponent does. You can't expect to learn a 15 move opening and then be able to do that every time. Why should an RTS be any different?

Actually in both Supreme Commander and Starcraft 2 I've seen plenty of guys successfully execute early rushes and catch unwary or unpracticed players off guard. In fact its a great way to shake up experienced people who prefer the long builds at the beginning. Also, in Supreme Commander there is a feature which is seriously lacking in almost all other games. Initial base builds.
One of the options you can set as the controller is if everyone has a small base right at the beginning. And it really speeds things up a lot. Not to mention a modifier that comes with the game to double all resource rates.

Thats one of the few things I really liked about the game and nobody else copied it, even as just an optional setting.
Dawn Of War had similar options to choose from before starting a new game, and I really loved it there.