I think I figured out what was missing from the Single Player Experience

[hyde]

You guys are missing the a key thing too.

Starcraft 2 lacked a strong antagonist.


Having your "Best friend" Tychus and Valerian/Mengsk as quasi-antagonists does not cut it.
In the end, Tychus was what he was. A dumbass being used again (first time being used by Raynor - though maybe not intentionally)
The game had no driving force or motivation. You really were just a marauding Battlecruiser fledgling around the Koprulu sector sippin whisky and listening to Sweet Home Alabama on your juke box...


P.S. I'm really pissed off my Collectors edition StarCraft OST did not come with that Sweet Home Alabama Cover. God damn it.

[Gradius]

You guys are missing the a key thing too.

Starcraft 2 lacked a strong antagonist.

Who was the antagonist in the vanilla terran campaign?

[MulletBen]

I really felt that, though there were indeed many problems, one was definitely the pacing. IN SCI and BW, You played a mission, then went either to an epic cinematic or straight back into discussing the results of the mission and planning the next mission, and then, suddenly, it was the next mission.

SCII, you play a mission, and then you are on the bridge of the Hyperion. You can walk around and talk to people, some of whom will talk about the last mission. Then you spend points for upgrades, etc., and then you go out to the mission tab, where you get to select from multiple missions, causing each one to have less meaning. The simple ability to sit around without doing a mission removes some urgency from what should be an urgent situation; the fact that you can play entire missions while Dr. Ariel sits on Agria and defends the community against the zerg indefinitely not only removes urgency from the story, but removes the player as well. If there were a time limit to how long you could spend doing a mission before you the time would run out and the mission would be impossible to complete would put back this urgency. Putting an arbitrary time on how long it takes until the Agria colony can hold ut no longer is better than letting them hold out forever, which doesn't make any sense for colonists who are apparently trying to evacuate ASAP. You could even put in mutually exclusive missions, where you could not finish one and have time for another. Some missions could have an indefinite period of time for which to accomplish them, like the first Tosh mission, and some would be necessary to propel the story, such as all the story missions. You would have to prioritize in order to figure out how to get everything done, and it would encourage the player to not laze around in the cantina watching terrible newscasts and listening to crappy covers on the jukebox. But without a time limit, you have to come up with another way to decide when and what mission to do next. I made sure I listened to what everyone had to say so I didn't miss an achievement before I would move on. Choosing missions, at least for me, came down to what unit I would be getting next, followed by whether I needed Zerg or Protoss points at that time.

Occasionally, the units unlocked by the mission were tied back to the story, as the Reaper and BCs, showed, but other than that, it was just Swan either mysteriously acquiring or re-uploading some plans, and BAM. Storywise, you got the units because you needed them for the mission, where in reality, you did the mission to get the units.

Motivation is definitely a big factor in making the story more important. In SCI, and BW especially, there were countless alliances and betrayals, involving discussions between characters from different races. In SCI, we were just an observer, watching the real leaders make the decisions. Being Jim Raynor in SCII, which we were told would feature a branching story, one could imagine making decisions of who to ally with to get a mission done, and whether or not to betray them when it came time. Instead, there is a single choice to ally or battle with the Protoss in a mission, and allying with Valerian, a tough decision that breeds intense dislike among the crew, is made by Jim, but not the player. The player could actually make decisions of who they would ally with: An old ally who is able to offer some, but not much, assistance, or a untrustworthy person like Mengsk, who can offer ships like BCs, or perhaps valuable information pertaining to the artifacts, but you get the feeling will betray you eventually. This combined with time limits on when you can begin a mission would involve the player more in decision making, and add more weight to each of the missions, thus bringing the player deeper into the story.

Then you'd just have to make SCII have a good story, and you're done!

[Eligor]

Who was the antagonist in the vanilla terran campaign?

The Confederacy and, finally, Mengsk.

[Wankey]

I really felt that, though there were indeed many problems, one was definitely the pacing. IN SCI and BW, You played a mission, then went either to an epic cinematic or straight back into discussing the results of the mission and planning the next mission, and then, suddenly, it was the next mission.

SCII, you play a mission, and then you are on the bridge of the Hyperion. You can walk around and talk to people, some of whom will talk about the last mission. Then you spend points for upgrades, etc., and then you go out to the mission tab, where you get to select from multiple missions, causing each one to have less meaning. The simple ability to sit around without doing a mission removes some urgency from what should be an urgent situation; the fact that you can play entire missions while Dr. Ariel sits on Agria and defends the community against the zerg indefinitely not only removes urgency from the story, but removes the player as well. If there were a time limit to how long you could spend doing a mission before you the time would run out and the mission would be impossible to complete would put back this urgency. Putting an arbitrary time on how long it takes until the Agria colony can hold ut no longer is better than letting them hold out forever, which doesn't make any sense for colonists who are apparently trying to evacuate ASAP. You could even put in mutually exclusive missions, where you could not finish one and have time for another. Some missions could have an indefinite period of time for which to accomplish them, like the first Tosh mission, and some would be necessary to propel the story, such as all the story missions. You would have to prioritize in order to figure out how to get everything done, and it would encourage the player to not laze around in the cantina watching terrible newscasts and listening to crappy covers on the jukebox. But without a time limit, you have to come up with another way to decide when and what mission to do next. I made sure I listened to what everyone had to say so I didn't miss an achievement before I would move on. Choosing missions, at least for me, came down to what unit I would be getting next, followed by whether I needed Zerg or Protoss points at that time.

Occasionally, the units unlocked by the mission were tied back to the story, as the Reaper and BCs, showed, but other than that, it was just Swan either mysteriously acquiring or re-uploading some plans, and BAM. Storywise, you got the units because you needed them for the mission, where in reality, you did the mission to get the units.

Motivation is definitely a big factor in making the story more important. In SCI, and BW especially, there were countless alliances and betrayals, involving discussions between characters from different races. In SCI, we were just an observer, watching the real leaders make the decisions. Being Jim Raynor in SCII, which we were told would feature a branching story, one could imagine making decisions of who to ally with to get a mission done, and whether or not to betray them when it came time. Instead, there is a single choice to ally or battle with the Protoss in a mission, and allying with Valerian, a tough decision that breeds intense dislike among the crew, is made by Jim, but not the player. The player could actually make decisions of who they would ally with: An old ally who is able to offer some, but not much, assistance, or a untrustworthy person like Mengsk, who can offer ships like BCs, or perhaps valuable information pertaining to the artifacts, but you get the feeling will betray you eventually. This combined with time limits on when you can begin a mission would involve the player more in decision making, and add more weight to each of the missions, thus bringing the player deeper into the story.

Then you'd just have to make SCII have a good story, and you're done!

I think the pacing completely killed it. On my first place through, I finished a mission. yay. I never understood the subttitle that was written for each scene. It was like "Hyperion Bridge" and then a cinematic

then "Hyperion Canteen" cinematic

Then fade to black and either a hyperion bridge or canteen 4 minutes later subtext. Why do you need to tell us? Do you realize how poor your game design is if we can't realize that we're on the bridge or in the canteen?

Furthermore, the fact that each character has a "name tag" compeltely dumbs the game down even further. OMG, I don't know that the blue marine in the back is Tychus Findlay!

Blizzard pretty much treated their audience as retards and thus made the story feel dumb.

What they need to do with HotS is rip out the whole idling part, each mission will have a beginning and an end cinematic that is action oriented or has good dialogue back to back to back. Finishing one mission will move over to another rather than idling around a space ship as if nothing happened.

[Gurluash]

The "Hyperion Cantina" and "Hyperion Bridge" thing is a classic Starcraft thing. In every Starcraft Cinematic there was a line of text explaining the location.

[Turalyon]

Don't forget the fact that there was hardly any story progression during actual missions. All the character and story development happened in-between missions (Hyperion stuff and cinematics). Each mission can be thoroughly summarised as "this thing happened" with not much else story progression despite them taking up the majority of "story" time - most of the campaign is just gameplay with a disjointed story draped onto the missions.

[TheRabidDeer]

Anybody that dislikes the pacing of the game can blame games such as mass effect. It is the cool new thing to do, to allow the player to explore things and get little bits of info or whatever at their own pace.

Personally, I do hope that they go back to a more traditional style where its mission to mission without the "exploration". Perhaps have a branching style where the decisions are made during the mission instead of picking which mission to do (yes, this would mean you will miss things the first time through). If they did that, the game would be amazing, or even perfect.

Also, Wankey... the name tag is there to indicate that they have something to say, not necessarily to show their name. After you click them and watch the interaction, the tag goes away. Its there to let you know what there is to interact with and if you have already interacted (there are some smaller things that have the same tag, like some medals/pictures on the walls in the cantina or the TV).

[TheEconomist]

Sounds kind of strange, but each time I replay the campaign, I like it more and more. I'm gradually becoming less and less disappoined by it. Who knows, maybe most of my discontent was nostalgia. I know a lot of it was the fact that if you've kept up with news and read the books, there was pretty much nothing new in the game, so that seems to becoming less and less of an issue.

[TheProgramer]

Sounds kind of strange, but each time I replay the campaign, I like it more and more. I'm gradually becoming less and less disappoined by it. Who knows, maybe most of my discontent was nostalgia. I know a lot of it was the fact that if you've kept up with news and read the books, there was pretty much nothing new in the game, so that seems to becoming less and less of an issue.

Agree 100% with all you just said. Especialy the last half.