Is there a good explanation why SupCom never became a proper cybersport?

Kilatamoro

Is it because of the UI mods? Insane randomness of artillery shots? Too much focus on base building that is not an entertaining spectacle for viewers?

I come from Starcraft and I personally got shocked when I was 1st playing ladder and found out my UI mods don't get disabled.

Thoughts?

ZLO

i have heard something like "it has lost it's place to CNC3" and it happened like in 2006 - but this is more like a rumor
i'd guess it has happened cause of poor balance, slower - less impressive looking gameplay
While C&C is giga-recognizable franchise that didn't yet rot away (and didn't even show signs of it yet), and game had pretty visuals and stuff, explosions in your face cause you can't zoom out, and more visual faction diversity (at least faction did look different for sure)

i don't think UI mods were very prevalent in supcom era/old days
You are looking at game right now, at Supreme Commander Forged Alliance that is HEAVY enhanced by FAF.
But you are seem to be asking about Supreme Commander
Supreme Commander afaik was popular, but popularity of online mode fell down pretty fast afaik.
There could be multiple factors... idk, chat could only hold 100 people (+100 more in separate chat)
no rating system for custom games, there was only ladder rating.
Community had to create their own rating system
There were no multiple regional servers, only one servers to play between australians, americans and asians, that could have caused some lag issues
As far as i remember when game came out it was not well optimised for the computers that existed at that time
So basically popularity of the game fell of a cliff and continued falling. i think only after FAF it began rising again. (this is more like my feelinig, not actual data, i have been playing online only since 2008 or 2009)
Supcom 1 isn't that amazing of a game. free mass fabricators that it inherited from Total Annihilation were bad for balance and economy, especially on big or choke-pointy maps.
SupCom FA is a huge leap forward in terms of balance and gameplay, but it still had problems and bugs, but not sure if that even matters, it probably was already "dead"
FAF added ton of featured and fixed bugs and improved almost all aspects of the game. now it is a good game and you wonder why it has not became a cybersport. imho, because it was not actually THAT good and it had competition, and original game client was not amazing. Starcraft had south korea phenomenon and also it was a pioneer of online RTS afaik.

Edit: Also could be that devs ran out of money, idk. or didn't see returns on the money that they could put in
2008 was a crysis year afaik

Edit2: so basically my point is that at 1rst game was popular, but was not that great, but later it is great, but no longer popular

ZLO

i don't have that great of an idea about how games become an E-spots, especially considering that not everyone had internet back in the days... so i guess game had to be popular and popular in PC-clubs.
Supcom just wasn't that popular.

Kilatamoro

Does it have a chance to become a cybersport now?

Nuggets

Maybe once the connection issues and desyncs (which have been rapidly increasing recently) are gone

wilson_

That would be huge. But even then, the player base is too small. Quake had a super small competitive scene as well in the end, nonetheless ID kept it alive for very long, and even kept hosting the QuakeCon for the QPL finals. Unfortunately, there is no publisher support for FAF. You can tell the difference in production value if you compare the average FAF stream to QPL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI4M5u5IxAA

@ZLO said:
Edit2: so basically my point is that at 1rst game was popular, but was not that great, but later it is great, but no longer popular

If the mechanics or balancing are crap, there's literally zero percent chance to become a big esport title. The only way around that is if we're talking successors for an existing series like Counter-Strike. There's a huge fanbase willing to wait.