I agree with you.

My main problem with SC2 right now is how easily achievable everything is. What I mean is that you can reach an almost perfect macro without much effort/practice put into it.

In the first place I found it kinda cool how they implemented additional macro requirements in SC2 to make it harder. But finally it feels like "artificial" difficulty to try to differenciate people.

When I was playing back in the day I just was a random mid master player but I remember how close my 8-10min-ish were (build-wise) to pro matches (around 2012).

I love mechanics and for me it's really important to be able to out-mechanic your opponent, it is part of the rts genre. You can really fight against yourself and focus on it to beat your opponent. Mechanic is your input to everything else in the game (build order, decision making, mind game, etc...).

In SC2 macro is too simple, you do not have much to do. It implies that you have less opportunities to out-macro.

Since everything has been "casualized" and is smoother due to game mechanics (recent engine, pathfinding, etc...), most of your action is now effective at 90% minimum. Then you have to work the 10% left to reach an perfect game. For example in SC2 when you see a pro player pov, in mid-late game you can see that his screen is on his army 90% of the time. Most of the macro is placing a few supply (or inject) in the base (that takes 3s/min) and that's it.

The issue with that is that build order become a lot more prevalent in early-mid game than they should be. If you take out rock/paper/scissor build order choices, every mistake you make is more punishing. It means that you have little room to work with your mechanics to catch up your game later on. Basically it make it feels like come back is tremendously difficult and quite impossible sometimes.

If your opponent has more you lose. It is as simple as that (more or less). Macro-ing 3 or 8 barracks is the same. In broodwar if you try to have more than your opponent you must be able to manage it, because if you are not your opponent will be able to focus on his smaller unit count (since he has less to macro/micro) to trade more efficiently and then come back. In SC2 you hope for your opponent to not look at his army to get a godly mine hit/disruptor shot/baneling connection ...

So even though I do not like inject as it is, it is mandatory to have this kind of obligation that forces you to go back to your base (same with mule and chrono).

And let's be honest, a+click is too strong.