Your average Scheldt High Resources Annihilation Compstomp player doesn't care if spectating is in, and that makes it hard for Relic to justify spending money on it.
^^This.
Listen to the latest interview the guys did with Lynx. He clearly mentions that the majority of COH players only play the campaign and skirmishes, the game will never be able to generate enough attention now to get into the competitive scene.
The core gameplay of COH may very well favor highly tactical competitive "ladder" play and esports, but most people seem to prefer more casual, stress-free gamemodes.
It's not a matter of the budget Relic had when they first started developing COH, they clearly chose NOT to put too much focus on the competitive scene. There are indie games, mods, as well as games more than a decade old with very strong competitive presence and that's because it's how they were marketed to begin with.
Don't forget that supporting competitive play would require CONSTANT balance and other adjustments, a lot of MOBAs are being updated weekly or even more often.
I guess I was cool with how things were with vCOH before they announced they'd move over to the steamworks, minus of course the crazy smurfing and hacking. I still think people should be allowed access to an extra profile for practice-related purposes, but with profiles in both games now tied to steamworks, that isn't gonna happen.
In addition, they seem to have dumbed down the stat system in COH2 to an incredible extent. The bulletins and unlockable commanders are also extremely stupid and require grinding, which has no place in a competitive RTS.
Last most important point, if they choose to go the "pay to unlock new units / guns / commanders / bonuses" route, rather than maybe develop full-fledged expansions introducing new stuff like in vCOH, that'd put off A LOT of competitive players. And it would obviously show that they don't care about the competitive scene and game balance.
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