UPDATE 2: I think people may be missing the point of the change. It's not intended to be a balance change; it's not supposed to buff or nerf Protoss. It's meant to fix a design problem with Protoss, especially in PvP. The distance it takes to walk across the map is a fundamental component of RTS games, and the fact that Warp Gate eliminates it is what makes PvP the worst matchup in the game. The change of course has ramifications for PvT and PvZ, but these could be balanced out. The point of the map is to try out the design change to see if it works, and to see if it could be balanced.
UPDATE: Everyone seems to be panicking about proxy gates. The map is of course not balanced, and
With the Heart of the Swarm expansion coming next year, Blizzard has the opportunity to make significant improvements to SC2 multiplayer to fix a few design flaws and add more depth, strategy, skill differentiation and overall fun. Let's toss around some ideas about what we'd like to see. I'll be raising a number of potential avenues of improvement and giving ideas where I can. Add your own ideas in the comments!
Let's focus on suggestions far beyond what could be done in a patch. We can assume that the changes we will suggest would require plenty of minor rebalancing in order to incorporate them. A complaint of "X would have to be nerfed!" is not really a counterpoint to
I was quite surprised when I read in the PTR about bunker build time being increased by 5 seconds. Clearly Blizzard think that bunker rushes are OP if they are making this change (and Dustin Browder mentioned in a recent interview I can't find that a nerf like this was coming), but I don't think it's a good idea. I feel like the bunker build time is not at all the problem; bunker rushing only seems OP because of a combination of deeper issues. I'm going to outline what I think these issues are here.
The new worker AI causes a discontinuity at 16 miners, as seen in this thorough macro analysis. The 17th miner mines less tha