Why all the SupCom 2 Hate?

Perhaps someone can elaborate why so many people seem to utterly loathe Supreme Commander 2, while praising SupCom Forged Alliance as though it were the messiah.

I enjoy elements of both games, but I found that SupCom 2 was a touch more streamlined. True, I would agree that it was dumbed down from the previous, but simplification isn't always a bad thing. I don't feel as though there was as great a variety in SupCom 2 as in FA, and I was disappointed by that, but does it really deserve all this unbridled hate that I see? I just don't understand, but perhaps that's because I'm not as devoted a fan to the RTS genre as others here. I've never been GOOD at them, either, but rather just played them for fun and a bit of a challenge.

So can someone enlighten me as to why you passionately dislike SupCom 2?

People were disappointed in comparison.

To put my thoughts in short: "It could have been one of the best RTS games on the market, if it had any other name."

It had its issues in the beginning, which are shown on te Xbox 360 version, but after patches it's not a bad game. Of course the beginning of supcom 2 was so disappointing to most that they never played it again. At least that's what I think. Also people need to stop comparing supcom 2 to supcom 1. They are very different games.

If it had a different name, people would have considered it a lot more favourably.

Part of the hate comes from the fact that it is so far removed from FA, but keeps the SupCom name.

Lack of mapping support annoyed folk, as did a large backwards step in modding (which personally was the silliest thing, because the technical aspect was 100% intact but there was no UI options to turn mods on/off).

Some people consider the changes (to make the sequel more friendly to the less hardcore audience) misguided.

I enjoyed the reduction in unit power between beginning units and late-game units. But that's because I considered the massive jump between T1 and T4 in Sup1/FA to be a bad thing. IMO, unit upgrades and research-unlocks weren't needed at all. They only made the game more confusing because you couldn't see if a Rockhead had any of the veterancy upgrades or not. That made a fight between even-numbers a gamble, and predicting whether someone could have a unit or upgrade was a matter of rote-learning all twenty upgrade trees.

Oh, and I hate that robots have veterancy. I didn't like it in Sup1/FA, so the increased use of it in Sup2 made me shudder.


And as the people above me have said; the patches really really did improve the game. At release it was terrible.

You shall not promise stuff you are not able to deliver.

Upgrades on everything - maybe its cool, but not feel good in rts game. I hate when im see unit and i dont know how strong it is. Upgrades not always changed something visual on units, and for sure you dont see it in strategic map.

Next all that teleports, jetpacks, unitarty, magnetron - for me this just destroyed game. I hate them. I losed one game having much bigger army with cybran, who just uses jetpacks on map with many holes. All strategic decisions just goes to trash, my units was too slow.

Game dont feel epic. Even starcraft is much better in this. Shoots effects feels cool, and powerfull, but than you see that they dont do anything and they are weak.

This is the part I love the most however.

The ability to use tactics and planning to eliminate a larger army via the use of jet-pack loyalists.

If the Supcom 2 was not Supcom series, it would be a fine RTS game. I think the battle part is much better than Supcom 1.
I would like to say that its battle was more like original TA, compared to FA.

Like others have said, its a fine game but not a SupCom game. They went backwards with the game development. Simplified it completely and added stupid upgrades.

It's simply nothing like what it should have been. That is why PA will be glorious.

SupCom2 is like SupCom for juniors. Judging from the demo, because I didn't buy the full game, it miscalculated the target market disastrously. Went from vast sandpit of mass destruction and total war (which we like) to oversimplified and constricted lego sim of pfff, built on the shifting sands of hype. I felt Chris Taylor had lost touch with his inner gamer. I hope he takes a little time out like Chris Roberts who went away and actually played a few games himself and came back with "the knowledge"!

I still play Forged Alliance using the Forged Alliance Forever lobby and it just keeps getting better.

The other thing you have to consider is;

• GPG actually listened to community complaints about Sup1/FA, and changed things in Sup2 because of it.

The terrible tragedy is that the community sucked at making good ideas. Daily posts on the forums of;

• moar experimentulz,
• moar veterancy,
• the economy is too hard.

We got exactly what we asked for, and we didn't like it.

That's exactly why I always say you shouldn't listen to gamers complaining about something :lol:

More likely due to the publisher changing from THQ to Square Enix; the result is a remarkably Japanised RTS that's far more Starcraft than Sup Com.

Supcom2 tried a bunch of new things. Some of them clicked, some didn't.

The economy change was the worst of all. It turns out that a payment system doesn't work with repeating build queues. Streaming is still the best way to understand how much production power you need and to distribute it evenly.

The experimentals were hit and miss. The "oversized classic role" experimentals sucked. The unique, gimmicky ones were crazy and fun. The unit cannon is finding its way into PA, and I doubt you can find anyone who will dislike it. Hopefully we'll see more interesting weapons along the line of magnet guns, capture guns, and energy devouring strategic(or personal) shields.

Supcom2 had a simply awful air game. Everything was a direct A vs. B slug match, and whoever could shoot up or shoot down harder won. A great deal of experimentals were useless against air- only the bomb bouncer had any decent effect. Its ability to maul through air units was both hilariously broken and made Cybran absolutely necessary in any multiplayer game.

Supcom was a fantastic game, the scale was great, and the units were awesome, the problem was that as Chris Taylor said, some units became obsolete, they tried to fix this with supcom 2, and that was good, BUT! they lost the scale and made it sorta consoley, bases wern't epic anymore, the maps didn't have the same huge feel, artillery didn't feel as powerful anymore, and the commanders had this stupid giant thick red ring about them indicating their range, that didn't look that huge either. It was dumbed down for consoles, and failed to take advantage of the PC tremendous power over the consoles. Also, i disliked the research centers, watching replays of players you see them defending while building research centers so they could 'tech up' it was the most daftest thing ever.

Saying that, it had advantages over supcom 1, me personally, i hated some things in Supcom (and FA) For example..

Mass intys, if your opponent had a huge number of intys, then you needed more to counter, and that was basically it in a nutshell, that's the actually problem with alot of games, the answer to a huge number of intys, is to get more intys, more is the answer, and that's not strategic thinking, that's not thinking outside the box, that's not thinking 'at all'.

As i said, and Chris taylor also noted, many units became obsolete, because they lacked a 'purpose' but mainly because they were so vastly outclassed by higher Tech units, the answer should come in utility, for example, this unit is not as strong as this unit, (but not completely outclassed either) but it has jetpacks, that enable me to jump over this gap and hit his power stations, or...this unit isn't as fast as this unit, but it's alot stronger and so you use it to either defend your base, or hold ground, or even!.. this unit isn't as fast, or strong as this unit (but again not totally outclassed) but it can dig underground, and plant bombs to sink buildings, or maybe having a unit that can climb up walls, or a unit that is stealthy, the 'clever thinking' does not come from 'brute force'.

The amount of times i have seen 'pros' play, only to see them thinking not strategically, but tactically, in regards to 'micro' and moving their units around to minimize return fire, or building their bases for optimal output, as if i wanted to play an economy simulator?? (This is also a reason why 'pro' players hate to play large maps, as rushing doesn't offer them an advantage, against a player who may be a strategic thinker, and very very smart, but not so quick when it comes to 'micro')

Also, the economy was poop, i don't like focusing on economy 'that much' as i prefer to play a strategic game (see : Ruse, or wargame EU) seeing players have minus energy or mass, and not getting punished for it, just looked kinda stupid, if it was upto me, i would halt all production for 5 seconds everytime you hit 0, and so forcing you to balance.

TLDR: Supcom 2 was for consoles.

I cant recall every asking for weird changes like that.
Also Developers cannot just follow what random people write somewhere. Most of those random people have no clue what they are talking about. They just write down ideas they have randomly, without thinking them through. The Developer(s) needs to be able to flat out reject many many bad ideas.

I didn't ask for those changes either, but I certainly do remember the 30 bajillion forum posts on it.

Exactly. You're exactly right.

The Supcom economy was hard to learn, but that was largely the fault of a broken, buggy economy. Catastrophic bugs and brutally fragile energy created rage inducing game enders for a vast majority of new players, and screwed up veterans as well.

I have had non RTS gamers pick up TotalA, and they learn the ropes very quick. Money comes in, money goes out, don't waste resources, blow excess metal on more factories. It's really not that difficult to keep track of those things.

How can someone even ask questions like this? :/

Bugs? There was that single problem with mex not producing any mass if they were upgrading while mass-stalling, but that is all?

Yeah I also don't really understand why people say the system is hard. It isn't in my eyes and it never was.