What is most important

[The Oracle]

What do you seek?

[Revolta]

you don't need groundbreaking trigger work to have a good design and make a fun map. And you dont need to adhere to blizzards shit canon, unless you mean shooting it out of a real cannon and into metzen's office. xd.

Everything else is essential.

[The Oracle]

Cast thy votes. This is important stuff.

[IskatuMesk]

At this stage adhering to Blizzard canon will only hurt a project. It is such a disastrous mess that no one can possibly recover it.

In 2015, I think it's just kind of expected a campaign will be fully voiced. Evidently the better the dialogue/writing and the more suitable the talent the better that will be presented. Execution of these elements is a lot more important than the story itself. Trying to push oneself to overreach writing and triggering is not going to be nearly as rewarding as actually executing an otherwise average setting in a polished and meaningful way. Consider that virtually no sc2 projects even have custom assets other than straight WoW ports because no one knows how to generate normals with MindTex or nDo. Even relatively basic asset work would stand a project out from anyone confined by the exceptional limitations of b.ent.

I voted for Challenge, Dialogue, and Gameplay. Out of a Starcraft project I expect highly challenging Build & Destroy gameplay unmarred by gimmicks like those Blizzard ruined its campaigns with, and good dialogue can hold an average setting afloat. Everything else, like VA, is just standard expectations.

[Jayborino]

And what, I wonder, is The fabled Oracle collecting this info for after so many years? Should we be getting excited for something?

[Thalraxal]

I kind of feel like I'm still very grounded in SC1 when answering this. I voted for gameplay, story, and dialogue. If I had two more votes, I'd have added terrain and challenge. Everything else on that list, I feel is a nice extra. It helps make for a better experience in the end, but they're not necessary to make a good campaign. That said though, voicing has pretty much become the norm in video games these days, so if you can only have one nice extra, that's the one to choose.

Adhering to canon is definitely an unwanted burden in the world of SC2. It certainly wasn't necessary in SC1, even if it was something of the norm back in the day. There's never been anything wrong with breaking with canon, ignoring the dumb bits, or changing it to suit your needs. It's just more necessary these days.

I also have to agree with Mesk on the state of B&D. While I was an adherent of gimmick-style B&D back in SC1, that was because vanilla B&D was the norm. Now, the opposite is true. Gimmick-style B&D is the norm, and vanilla B&D is a rare and precious thing. That, and considering how rigid SC2 melee map design is, I feel like you can get a lot out of B&D just be rejecting that structure.

[Church]

I voted gameplay, story, and dialogue, because that's what are personally the most important to me, but I think it depends a lot on context. Every project will call for different things in order of importance. If the developer's primary reason for making a campaign is to provide an entertaining experience for the player, gameplay would probably be more important than story. If the developer's intent on the other hand is to get a message/theme across to the player, story might become more important. It's really hard to generalise this kind of thing.

In any case, though, regardless of importance, attention to quality should be payed to all aspects.

I don't really play StarCraft II though so this is more how I approach SC1 design ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[CowardI]

Well, well, well. A slight tease.

Voted Custom Graphics for Units and Portraits, Script/Dialogue and story.