That brings me to here; to Team Liquid. While I know almost everyone here has a lot more experience, insight, and skill than me in regards to the 1v1 metagame of SC2, I hope to not change opinions, but provide insight. Insight into what I want, as a casual player, in hopes that it can be a small steps towards coming together as an entire community, a single voice for the future of SC2.
Part 1: The art of Micro
As a casual player, I wanted to start here, as I believe this is the hardest thing to really feel like "I did that really well!" From the eyes of a casual, it often boils down to "I need to micro better" or "I microed well enough." For me, there is not "well, the micro my infestors was good, but my viper micro needs a lot of work!" or "I won that battle because of that really well placed Blinding Cloud!" Each battle boils down to the outcome only, and within that outcome there is micro of tens of units. The solution to this is, I believe, a simple one. Slow the hell down. A battle doesn't have to end in 30 seconds. I'm not saying to slow down the game speed, only the longevity of units. 10 marines will still beat 10 zerglings with a similar amount of damage sustained, but it won't be over in the blink of an eye. Allow players to make conscious decisions during the battle, like a war commander would, not only instinctive reactions.
I know this is a VERY unlikely thing to happen, so I won't speak on it anymore.
Part 2: Positioning is Key
Contrary to the above sentiment, positioning is something that I CAN recognize as I play. Many times I have thought "wow, I would have done a lot better if my zerglings were not on that ramp" or "if only I would have waited for my roaches, I would have been much better off!" Positioning is, to me, like pre-emptive, thought out microing. It allows me to THINK about what I'm going to have happen. Not just instinctively react to things. While I agree that SC2 has some sort of this-- the person in better positioning will certainly win the battle, all else equal, it seems to have a smaller impact than I would like, with defensive units especially. I believe that there should be a larger amount of defenders advantage. To win a game with brute force, you should have to have gotten a huge lead on your opponent. If I attack the front gates with an equal sized army, I should lose. Full stop. It doesn't matter if I'm playing against Terran, Protoss, or Zerg. I believe that the defenders advantage should come from positioning, NOT walking distance from my main to his. That leaves me options for how to break the "turtle." One of them is simply growing larger. Snowballing until they can't take it anymore. Denying expansions. The other is finding another method of attacking. All of the races have dropships, siege units, and harass units. Use them accordingly.
Part 3: Sieging is a costly endeavor.
If I am going to make a decision to siege someone's castle, I can't half-ass it. I believe that dedicating oneself to a siege should be a huge commitment, that will either win the game outright, lead to starvation, or lose the sieger the game. I shouldn't be able to burrow a lurker, take out a mineral line, unburrow it and run away in less than 20 seconds. If I'm going to have a Lurker, it needs to have been positioned there before I started the attack. Why can siege tanks fly again? There's nothing about a siege that involves a quick getaway... Burrowing my lurker in its position should be an investment. It should be the zoning tool that it was designed to do, and it should do damage accordingly. If I already have lurkers placed, don't go there. They were there first. Remember that that's supply out of my army that is not being used somewhere else, and because the Lurker takes a long time to burrow and unburrow (like a siege unit SHOULD), you know that I'm not going to be able to unburrow them, move them into position, and still make you fight them. "Normal" units should be able to hit and retreat if it's not going their way. Siege units should, under almost no circumstances, be able to be saved if the siege goes sour.
Part 4: Maps are fun!
Let me explore new options! Let me have 4 bases off the bat and die to a rush. I, in all honestly, don't want to be able to know what I'm going to do to the opponent before loading and screen, and right now I do. "I'm going to 17 hatch 17 pool 17 gas into speedlings." I do that literally every game. Every single one. Why is it that? Why can't there be a map where that doesn't work as well on? Why can't there be a map where I know my opponent is going to have 3 bases if I do that? Why can't there be a map where there IS no natural. I don't care if it's balanced at my level of play, if I play better than the other person I'm going to win. Let's get some diversity in the map pool. More diversity than "Let's add a golden expansion!" and "Look! This one has some rocks on it!"
Part 5: All units should be useful.
Let me explain this first-- I don't necessarily think all units should be useful to everyone. When I was in bronze, the high templar was not a useful unit. That doesn't mean it's not useful, that means I wasn't good enough to use it. I don't think that a unit who is almost completely useless should be in the game, there should be no units that are outclassed almost completely. There currently are. It is simply better in almost every situation for me to spend 200 minerals and 100 gas on roaches, ravagers, hydralisks, one muta, half of an ultralisk, an upgrade, even overseers than it is to buy a swarm host. From what I hear about Terran, it is not exactly "advisable" to build cyclones. Protoss has so much overlap on ground splash damage that it's craziness. The swarm host is supposed to be a powerful zoning unit. The Lurker exists now, which is a powerful zoning unit. One of these needs to be reworked. Because the Lurker has precedence, it should be the Swarm Host. Make it a support unit-- a unit with a little bit of bulk that can carry 2 crawlers on its back. When it burrows, those crawlers work like normal crawlers, adding versatility and usefulness to the static defenses of the Zerg, as well as adding a new means of detection to the Zerg army. A good opponent can snipe the host instead of the crawlers, killing both crawlers faster, where a less skilled opponent has two crawlers to fight, which is fine. Rework the Cyclone into a fragile, yet fast, ground to air specialist.
Part 6: Upgrades are for the late game!
I believe that a quick +1 shouldn't be the norm. I think upgrades should be expensive, slow to complete purchases, and that they don't necessarily have to be linear. Their main purpose should be not to make end game units unstoppable, but to make the early and mid game slew of things you built still be able to hang. Zerglings and Marines still have their uses in the late game. They do crazy amounts of DPS. But Zealots are used mostly as meat shields. buffing either their level 2 or level 3 armor and weapon upgrades will make them more useful throughout the whole game, not just as meat but as an actual attacking unit. This wouldn't affect their early game balance because upgrades should take a long time! Disappointed at the carrier's performance in the mid game, but think its very powerful late game? Great, make the first weapons upgrade for it better, and the second and third worse. Then it's got a surge at +1 and levels out towards the end game. It opens a ton more options for balancing.
In conclusion
I rambled on longer than I thought I would, and I probably am misled on many of my points. These, however, are lots of ideas that I would fully support if done right. Please tear me apart if you feel so incline, I'm very driven to see other points of view. I believe that's the biggest component of growth and development as a society.