It is why many people, especially in recent years, started to acknowledge C&C3 as a proper C&C game that we all should have been a bit more relaxed on back in the day.
Everything that came after C&C3 was simply a mess.
EA was most unlike its typical self during C&C3/KW, hell you could say they were a decent company. Unfortunately upper management stepped in and demanded changes and the people that made that time period good were let go or they moved on themselves.
Unfortunately Rivals acted as a confirmation that we'll never see that face of EA ever again.
Edit: C&C3's biggest flaw was the lack of continuity from TS/FS. The mission intel database only did so much to bridge those gaps but at least the intel database existed... In later games they made absolutely zero effort to explain continuity gaps, hell, in RA3 they hit the bloody reset button and pretended nothing happened prior to it.