Why the game is so frustrating and didn't have the expected success

I saw master of rotflness play the campaign and was like. NOPE!

Why would you want something you pay extra just to unlock to be more or less weaker than the standard units? (specialists tend to suck against 90% of a unit roster). Make t1 specialists instead and make t2 beefy universilists that can still be pawned by the relevant specialists, this way the early game even benefits from a wider variety of tactics and back and forth counter play and the t2 units can still be game-changers.

I was in early access alpha of etherium and in it's defense : there was no major difference installing and running it on wine over running it on windows, which is really impressive for early alpha.

it's just not my game type though.

Because t2 shouldn't be super expensive either. T2 should be double or maybe a bit less Than so compared to t1. The factory being about double the cost and the units only costing slightly more than t1.

This brings in the ability to have massive strat bombers I'm t2, or a fighter that can be invisible to radar yet have around the same stats as t1- maybe a bit worse. Or a tank that is amazing at dealing with large crowds of units. etc.. etc...

Why pay more for a unit that is specialized? For its specialization of course!

On a side note Grey Goo runs like complete ****.
Massive slowdowns etc. lacking many features that are kind of important for a multiplayer title.

I won´t even start about Etherium.

Etherium isn't your typical RTS, so for me it gets a pass on most criticism.

An effective mix of specialists in both tiers is surely preferable, surely. A factory with just specialists will likely frustrate those people already frustrated with the mono-type factories that exist now even more. Other games have it right, (ie, this is not one of the things they do wrong (they do stuff wrong), an effective spread of specialists/more unique units through every tier provides interesting moments through the game.

take a look on supreme commander and total annihilation you may understand ...
i do have to agree though that many people seemed to have (don´t want to say unrealistic) too high expectations ...
considerirng the background of supreme commander and the resources available to planetary annihilation ...
to the point were i imagine even if it weren´t for the planetary aspect that the game would have less varried content and as such be an arguebly "lesser" experience ...

the most common complaint i hear is people expecting a "true" successor to TA (whatever that is supposed to mean, direct copy? sequel?) ... PA is anything but that it is a "spiritual" successor to the TA like games meaning building upon many aspects of total annihilation but including gameplay and ideas of its own ...