[Tractor]

I've just been writing an unfavorable post in GPGNet regarding Supreme Commander gameplay. In short, i was disappointed by the lack of strategic deepness of the game, which was sold as a keypoint.
The post was really not insulting, no hidden advertisement, no personal attack, just giving an opinion, with some arguments. So really this could have been debated or forgotten in the forum. Just another voice in the crowd.

So what surprised me is the reaction of GPGNet : i was instantly BANNED, my posts erased, no trace, no explanation, just erased from existence.

Eventually, i kept the text of the message, so i'm reproducing it here.
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I've been playing Supreme Commander quite a bit,
and really tried to give it its fair chance to be a great and favorite game.
The game was young, it needed to mature, balance could be improved, mechanisms too, but most of all, players would learn, play better and better, and find new tricks, which would make the game rich and interesting.

Well, after giving it about a hundred games 1v1, i must say i am disappointed.

The game pretends to be "trully strategic" ? This is bold statement, quite far from the truth.

To sum up : its all about scaling. Exponential scaling. Nothing bright, the one who has the most wins, end of story.

It seems now that games have standardized more and more to a single viable strategy :
- Phase 1 : Level 1 swarming : Create as many Level 1 unit (tanks and arti) as possible, try to swarm the ennemy under a more massive number of units
- Phase 2 : Level 1 standoff : if ennemy resists, you end with avoiding some point defenses and building your own at chock points. If good, phase 1 has allowed to get more mass than the ennemy
- Phase 3 : Level 3 Rush : upgrade to 3 as fast as possible, then launch a final attack; You should be first if phase 1 was favorable.

End.

I'm not interested to know that someone, somewhere, had one different game : it's just hiding the very great majority. I've just been witnessing this development in 90% of games, and the more as the level improved, so really, the small amount of different strategy, which eventually are possible only because both players are still newbyes, are not representative.

So this is it. The game has matured, yes, but in a way which standardize the opening, and with only one effect to consider : ressource/army scaling.

Sorry to say, it is really poor.

Let's take the old (no longer sold i believe) Rise of Nations as a comparison example : you've got borders to expand, limited numbers of cities to grow, very effective military counters, many upgrades, choice between fast territory expansion, military spending, research tree. Well, this is choice.

Here there is nothing even close to that.

Where are the counters ?

Nearly nowhere. Interceptor are good counters to ennemy scouts and bombers. That's about it at level 1. Tanks/Arti have no real counter. Sub have no counter. So swarm them.

Wait for level 2, where helicopters give a small chance to produce ground counters, with available counters counters (mobile AA). Or Air-to-submarine units, effective against Sub.
That's becoming interesting.
Only problem is : you don't have a chance to play that. Just skip level 2, go to level 3, and swarm again.

Really really, i'm disappointed, and gonna regreat my investment in this game. This is nowhere near as good as RoN, AoE2, or even TA.

Many will disagree, or provide counter points, but frankly, it doesn't change the core of the argument. Looking around, a lot of other players seem to feel the same, telling about the same story into many different contexts, and this is no surprise. The game has pretty good graphics, yes, but also pretty limited gameplay. And this is a pity.
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As can be witnessed, this hardly can qualifies as an insulting post. So is the content itself considered so unfavorable that it deserve the worst sanction possible in a forum, an erase & Ban ? This announces some strange future for GPGNet.

I'm not pretending the post above to be "upper truth" of everything, but frankly, there was no chance to debate anything : GPGNet just erased the whole thing, banned my account without a word of explanation, and this story is now evolving from a simple debate on SC gameplay towards a more random debate on GPGNet practices.
They must be really in a trouble to react like this. Are they so in disarray ? Is what is said really too true to be left and read on a forum ?
This is not what i was expecting from a public company. As a matter of fact, now I'm waiting very little in matter of game improvements, which is probably detrimental for all players.