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I have been thinking about things that could be changed that would not affect the game engine or require a ridiculous overhaul of the game, since anything that requires said overhaul needs the full support of Blizzard. I am not sure if they even want to tinker with the game engine right now.
That being said, there are some small things. I haven't been able to fully work them out to know how they affect all areas of the game though, so all feedback is more than welcome!
1) Increase of the supply cap to 260+
Pros:
-No need to recalculate supply values of all units
-More supply to distribute over the current maps
-Takes longer/more bases to get maxed efficiently
Cons:
-Low-end computers/laptops might not be able to handle this. Blizzard wants this game to be highly accessible by many specs, including low tier.
-Might increase power of end game deathball and impact comebacks negatively.
2) Increase the mining time of minerals (this is easily done in the SC2 Mapmaker, just go to the mineral values)
Pros:
-This makes it so that any worker past 16 on a mineral line will add way less efficiency, which makes it less effective to stay on a low base count, and more attractive to get more bases.
-It will free up supply in earlier stages of the game, since you need less supply invested into economy per base.
Cons:
-It will slow down the early to mid stages of the game. Blizzard wants the game to be action packed from the get go. Will they support a change that reduces the speed of the earlier stages by a bit?
-Does it change the efficiency of 1-base all-ins? Not sure on this
3) Give more units the ability of moving shot, which means instant turn rates to fire (like how a marine can instantly turn and shoot, and a stalker cannot since it has a delay on turning speed).
Pros:
-Increases micro incentive/rewards the skill of a player in skirmishes and early to mid game.
Cons:
-Will not increase micro incentive enough in large scale end game Deathball battles, core problem stays around.
-Requires Blizzard to alter unit mechanics. Not sure if support can be found.
I will add these to the original post, now that I have answered your question.
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1) Do you know how bad the game would be with 260 supply? Think about the unit building mechanics of zerg and protoss for a second
2) Slowing down the mineral acqusition rate does nothing. Think about mules and how big of an impact they would have against the other races.
3) Which units are you talking about changing? Units like stalkers have a delay for a good reason.
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As I said in the "Cons" section of the "possible" solution:
-Might increase power of end game deathball and impact comebacks negatively.
It will also take more of an economic investment to get to that stage though. In the case of Zerg, your bank needs to be significantly larger too. I don't know how much of an offset that would be. Therefore I state that I have not been fully able to work out the impact that these possible changes could have on the game as a whole.
I do see where you are coming from, maybe my explanation at the Cons section is too ambiguous or unclear.
If the mining speed is decreased, the value of MULES will also decrease accordingly. Of course the MULE mining rate would have to be changed proportionally to the difference in mining speed and income of a regular worker to offset an upset in income balance.
I like your feedback, this will help create a bigger and better list of pros and cons later on after more discussion in the thread. Cheers!
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How do you guys feel about the HoTS units being able to detract from the deathballing? While i'm glad the blizz devs are noticing its not optimal it seems to me units like the widow mine are cool and everything but easily stomped out by say a deathball with a detector, since they all involve very good range. At that point the terran has wasted resource/supply/build time on making those, weakening his 'deathball' group.
Other than forcing tanks to unsiege so the deathball can walk in, much like broodlords do for zerg, how is the tempest taking away all that much from the protoss deathball? It could also just force you to smash into a ball of protoss.
I like that protoss are getting a harass unit(oracle or w/e) but the tempest just stinks as i feel like when i play TvP i already have to build vikings and i hate them b/c they are useless on the ground and waste minerals and supply and too slow to effectively harass(transform time is painfully punished as well, straight up, straight down) and can't leave the safety of the main army so they dont really save marines from colossus as much as you would think, 0 armor but are armored type thus incurring a penalty. AKA build more vikings for HOTS, yay?
One thing i don't see ever being helped is the Nueral Parasite and the new pull ability. If they are too crappy (rangewise) no one will use them. But if they are too good, certain units will no longer be built, and for it to be effective, don't you have to pull it into your own deathball?
If the resource rates and DPS were changed would much of this matter less? or is unit design such as the colossus being one of the worst offenders in DPS per APM most of the problem, wouldnt it have to be reworked significantly if you dropped some of its nutso DPS? Stim marine groups vs. buildings is also laughable situation but that falls under DPS change i suppose. Basically just adding units to this game i feel like won't fix a thing in terms of deathballing strength and building said units will only die embarrassingly fast b/c they will be spreading their power over the map while a giant ball of units runs around crushing all of it but the blizz devs will never change things that already exist like pathing or bad unit design.
Once again i have to say the OP is very well put together and you have nailed just about all the things everyone has been talking about for a long time, its only now that we can start to see its a combination of elements that produce the less than optimal levels of enjoyment that could be had in a starcraft game.
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Excellent post. I recently watched Fantasy play vs Flash and that was such a tactical slug fest with small battles going on all over the place in order to push their advantage. In sc2 it's always just getting that one favorable engagement. With the exception of some MMA TvZ gameplay I feel that SC2 is just clashing massive armies with long build up times. I never really thought about why this would be, but the higher DPS makes a lot of sense. It's sad that this will go mostly ignored by Blizzard, because I think HotS is not going to make gameplay better. They would do well to read this and experiment a little.
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I agree especially with increase mining time on minerals. I really think this is something that should be tried by Blizzard.
Would love to see people expanding more aggressively and spend more time evenly spreading out their workers between bases. And a somewhat slowed down early/midgame would in my opinion allow for more tricksy/cute play and diverse strategies without as much risk of instantly being overrun.
I didn't recognize the DPS element before you brought it up though. It's interesting as well. SC2 has always felt a bit more fast paced, but could never put down my finger as to why. I guess it's a combination of the macro mechanics, income rates and DPS.
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love this post, don't agree with how to change everything though.
I think fixing dynamic movement and switching the units towards how BW was would be the right decision.
one change I do kind of agree on is speeding up mineral income, but that would be a gigantic change and all timings would move.
Mineral heavy units and structures would need their price increased which would negate the benefits. (marines and cannons)
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not the best solutions, either the game would need to be completely rebalanced, or it would just increase the issues you are trying to fight.
Also not agreeing with the best players are maxed on their possibilities. I think most are pretty lazy when it comes to using game mechanics that allow you to do things easier. You have more to think on how to move the units, but it saves tons of apm for other things.
Imo the AI is too efficient (unless it is the thors, or projectile units) if you let it do what it wants, but lings are probably the best example of how to make the ai work against you, seen all the time fighting marines. I think going down one point in gamespeed would solve most issues, but I can understand no one wants to admit that Sc2 is too hard on fastest. But sc2 is widely unexplored still when it comes to how to use units effective in terms of apm cost. Marines are a good example of a unit that people waste tons of apm with needlessly. So I think the issue will fix over time when people are better with the game. It is after all easier to learn and harder to master then its predecessor. (Just my personal opinion from playing both games)
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The most disappointing thing about all of this is that i'm pretty sure the devs did this on purpose. The whole speeded up aspect of SC2 wasn't an accident. Faster games were supposed to make people enjoy the game more with more action(that doesn't happen) as well as get more tournaments and more players into tournaments into shorter time spans. The problem with that is that this is not Street Fighter II. Its supposed to be a strategy game but now that its so sped up its destroyed any strategy that could be had and is just more of a mechanical do this as fast as you can and you will win. Not saying there isn't supposed to be mechanics or that BW didn't have that b/c it did, controlling the army is the fun part and comebacks are fun too, but in sc2 that stuff is not important.
So the fact that they want the game this way and more than likely wont be able to ever make it better with this approach means they will have to either hide the fact they were wrong or just admit that they were wrong and make drastic changes. While an expansion is the best time for stuff like this the real question is does the SC2 dev team even agree that the game is becoming stale and the whole speeded up aspect just plain sucks since all that happens now is that the best players are just spending tons of time massing up and then very little time fighting. The speeded up economy is one of the worst things they couldve done IMO. It makes comebacks harder, punishes attackers more, makes macro more important than micro and the micro is waaaay more fun to play and watch. When everything dies fast, there is less micro(the DPS problem).
Somehow positional advantages make BW a better game, it somehow doesn't suffer from the tarded deathball and actually has comebacks. The Warp in for protoss is cool and everything but if people would honestly look at it, they would see that it makes comebacks impossible in almost all situations its used in. The siege tank and lurker were awesome for this. So, the MU thats most praised as being the most interesting and fun, guess what? TvZ the siege tank is good in. The most boring MU, the most predictable, the most complained about, TvP. The siege tank is terrible in. (Not including Mirror MU's but you get the point).
The macro mechanics are also very undesirable and things like chrono boosting out probes annoys the heck out of me, zerg players have complained about larvae inject since day one and everyone has complained about MULES non-stop. I know the reason they added the macro abilities b/c they see the difference between pro's and noobs is partially managing your workers, but really who cares? Should that be the difference? I guess there has to be something difficult to do, not missing chrono's inject's or mule's. So i guess those are necessary evils but they shouldn't have to speed up mining so much (more $$$ or more workers=$$$). Somehow though, they are not even in terms of difficulty.
Sadly, if none of this is addressed i truly believe SC2 will die. 
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This post should actually be highlighted. Very insightful and informative!
Not much to argue really, I guess we'll be waiting for HOTS and see if it brings any changes to the table.
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i agreed with everything you had to say, it was a really nice post
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EPT
