My humble wishlist:
1. Good story mode.
Most prominent complaint about SC5 was story mode (good, but extremely short and covering only story of two characters), the story mode most people seem to bring up as example of good one is SC3 story mode.
I completely agree with those opinions and ask to make a story mod like in SC3. I liked it very much not only for its presentation, but also that we were able to partially influence a journey of the character and their ending.
Also I want to ask – if pre rendered cutscenes for each character take too much time and money to make, then make scripted cutscenes like in SC3. If even those a very resource-cunsuming, then make comic-styled cutscenes like like SF5, for a few hudred dollars any artist on deviantart would gladly make them for you. Even if those are too much for budget, then just make a full texted story for each character – even that is much better than having a fully rendered story, but only for two characters.
2. Learn from DOTA experience.
DOTA clearly shown that a few thousand fans could make much more than dozens of thousands of game’s developers. So please, leave development kits for fans.
If you want to get money for that, then you could just do the same thing Icefrog did – sell best fans’ creations as DLCs and share the money between you and creators of such content.
3. Consider negative experience of SC2:HD and most Hollywood remakes.
Most old fans were crying “SC5 sucks, SC2 is the best”. And specifically for them SC2HD was released. I don’t have any insider info and I don’t know exact sales numbers. But I still see SC5 streams on Youtube and Twitch and small SC5 tournaments still happen. While online activity of SC2HD is much lower and to be honest it seems quite non-existent to me.
Also I’d like to point out representative example of Star Wars and Prometheus movies. Those remakes were loved by old fans, but younger audience considered those movies morally outdated.
Some of the young people even said that in our days “Alien” looks like Starcraft prequel and Prometheus look like something of lower quality than fan-made series Starcrafts.
One famous film critic even called those movies “nothing more than a milking machine for old fans” and pointed out that “apparently authors intend to milk fans forever, even though most of them are already quite old”.
Also I’d like to point out that a lot of professional players completely abandon video games after marrying and having children, as they don’t have as much free time anymore. And if that critic is right, then milking term of game fans is much lower than that of movie fans.
After commercial failure of SC5 and Lost Swords authors decided to went the most safest and profitable route – making SC6 as close to old fans’ tastes as possible. I don’t condemn them for doing that, but with due respect I need to say – constantly making SC2 remakes is a bad idea, it would certainly appeal to old fans, but most probably won’t be appreciated by newcomers. And experience of online RPGs clearly shown – if no new players come to the game, while old ones slowly leave, any gaming community would slowly die out.
