Drastic changes are coming to "Starcraft 2" in hopes to improve one of today's most famous real-time strategy video games.
Recent report from Kotaku and discussion threads in gaming forums like Team Liquid reveal that video game developer and publisher, Blizzard, is considering the removal of major macro mechanics as well as Chrono Boost and MULEs, or Manual larva spawn, in future multiplayer games.
According to Kotaku, Blizzard's David Kim announced on their Gamescom stream that they will be doing a macro overhaul when they launch the next beta patch.
Before Kim's announcement, he wrote in Battle.net's forum the idea and the possible actions that can be taken by Blizzard to augment the increasing difficulty of the game. He mentioned that because "Legacy of the Void" is becoming more difficult to play because of their goal of having "more action, micro on both sides during engagement, less down time, etc.," they are trying to locate areas that are difficult to manage but aren't really easily noticeable in order to make the game somehow easier to manage.
"For example, as a player doing larva inject, it's somewhat difficult for me to tell how well I'm doing in a given game. Further, my opponent really has no idea how well I'm doing it either. In esports matches, this is also something that viewers can't tell either. Because macro mechanics are an area that's difficult to do, and not many people can really tell how well someone is doing it, we've been exploring potentially cutting them or making them less important," Kim furthered wrote.
He also mentioned in the forum that they have two possible options.
The first option is setting spawn larva in autocast by default, but spawns only 3 larva, nerfing Mule efficiency by 20% or so as well as increasing Chrono boost cost to 50 with the efficiency not quite doubled
The second option is to cut Chrono and mule and setting spawn larva in autocast by default, but spawns only 2 larva.
Hence, as it turned out, Blizzard goes with the macro overhaul. However, this is just part of the changes that Blizzard is doing since the beta launch of the "Legacy of the Void" earlier this year.
As cited by Kotaku, since the game's release in 2010, all three races of "StarCraft II" have their own specific macro abilities that players have to manipulate to help increase their chance of winning. Thus, the news came as a shocker for players, who have already grown accustomed to using macros. Nonetheless, the report suggested that it will help less-skilled players as they would not worry too much if they forget to keep up their macro, but Kotaku also emphasized that it could turn out to be a bad move for Blizzard.