Give casters a shot at designing a patch
Casters still aren't perfect for the role either, unless we can resurrect someone like day9, who has been a progamer and a legendary caster and a game developer. But even if, hypothetically, pro players were a 100% match for the job and casters were a 80% match, I would still take the casters, because the controversy and distrust around having a competitive game designed by non-retired pro players, with their glaring conflict of interest, is an absurdity that's quickly becoming untenable. No one would stand for it in any other sport.
I made a post several patches ago suggesting that maybe the balance council is just too big. Here 's the gist:
- Appearance of conflict of interest is just as bad as actual conflict of interest, as it erodes trust in the organization and paralyzes them.
- Voting is broken because they're voting blindly on individual changes as opposed to cohesive suites of changes.
- They could apply some modern project management tools: a Jira or git repo so that they can put out several versions of the patch and then finally vote on a single version as opposed to individual changes to give to our beloved Blizzard Intern.
I think all that has held true this past year, though maybe the analysis that it's "just too big" was too charitable. At the very least, the dismissal of complaints about conflict of interest as "conspiracy theory" is laughable now.
Why I think casters may be better suited to doing balance:
Casters' interests align better with the community at large
- The more fun the game is, both to play and to watch, the more their audience grows.
- Casters may be partial to one race or another, but they aren't financially incentivized to make one race stronger than another.
Progamers are not helped by being involved in perceived conflict of interest
Progamers designing patches hurts the reputation of the entire game outside of the echo chamber that the community has made for itself. That means new players being off-put, which in the long run means the game's demise is accelerated. Not having progamers do balance frees progamers from taking flak for their inherent biases. They also have no PR experience or platform through which to address controversy.
Collaborations between casters would inherently be far less adversarial than a zero-sum political game between representatives of three competing factions. Having progamers fight over balance outside of the game is a recipe for resentment and probably has already damaged a lot of friendships.
Protoss representation in the council is likely affected by survivorship bias
The toss players on the council are simply not going to be as vocal, as they likely don't have as much at stake anymore if they're still playing professionally despite having virtually no chance of winning tournaments. They almost certainly have other revenue streams, e.g. a popular YouTube channel or a well-paying part-time job or stonks or what not. That may be why we see so much unilateral disarmament. No one should be playing pro Starcraft without a backup plan, obviously, but there is almost certainly not a single toss player for whom the backup plan isn't already their main source of income.
Casters have a breadth-first understanding of the game
- They may have less in-depth knowledge on the hyperspecifics of each unit, but the most experienced casters will likely have accumulated much more lateral knowledge of the game than most of the best pros.
- Progamers see the game first and foremost through the lens of their own race and matchups. Having each race perspective represented may, in theory, lead to a balanced win/loss rate, but it won't lead to cohesive changes or to a game that's fun to play or to watch.
Casters watch lower-level/average player games
Most SC2 YouTubers interact with lower-level players and have series where they specifically feature and analyze low-level games. They can make much better judgments on whether something is just balance whining or when something is legitimately unfair at all levels than those who play exclusively at the top.
Casters know what the audience wants
The emotional reactions that casters have at game-changing moments represents what the audience feels better than what a progamer feels.
All the back-and-forth on the Disruptor and Liberator and "stable openings" vs "anti-turtling" is a symptom of not being able to decide if, or when, sudden death makes for a game that's good to play or to watch. Slow down the game and there aren't as many memorable moments; speed it up too much and every loss feels like bullshit and every win like a fluke.
Those are the terms that you see casters discussing balance issues in, whereas progamers are, understandably, discussing in terms of "how many times have I lost to this unit". In terms of game design, the latter has a no more qualified position than the rest of us shouting on reddit -- only that their claims are a little easier to quantify and gather data on, because the rest of us have lopsided skill sets and always end up with a 50% W/L rate.
Just as a lot of unrelated marine animals become identical to crabs, we're seeing more and more units become either marines or flying marines. That may make the game more fair (ignoring that it shuts down any diversity of skill expression), but it's neither memorable to watch nor fun to play. Casters know viscerally a good game when they see one, and can assess balance on those terms.
What do
I don't know how this would work politically; it's not as though we can hold a referendum or anything. But I wouldn't be surprised if, after all the flak that the current council members are receiving, they would be open to taking a break from doing balance. So maybe the move is to ask the casters to step up.
Right now, the casters and online personalities are essentially specialized analysts/play testers for a game designed by pro gamers. It might make sense to flip the script, so that casters design the game and pro gamers take on an advisory role to spot design errors in the minutiae before a PTR is released to a disillusioned fan base.