There is also the fact that since HD and DE balance is quite different, being experienced on the first might no be equivalent to being experienced on the second (even tho it’s still better than not having experience at all)
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Block everybody under 2k5. Every balance change suggestion should come with an account elo attachted so we can know who is speaking.
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No, you wont qualify for above 1600 on DE. Luckily me neither. If we play 1v1, i think you win 11
I actually propose the contrary, players from above 1600 ELO that shouldn’t be able to discuss about balance on official forums.
Here’s a more realistic graphic to illustrate my point
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that chart makes even less sense than mine 
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The following graph was posted by /u/yaoz889 on Reddit (link to thread) in early april 2020.
So according top OP, only less than 1% of the player base should have any input on balance questions?
Furthermore, being good at the game does not equal being good at game design and vica versa. They are two different (but not unrelated) skills.
I do agree that forums does have maybe a bit too much balance or new civ suggestions, but I would suggest that the admins/mods would create a dedicated subforum for balance suggestions and new civilization ideas.
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Yes, hahahahsha. I thought of something as much as nonsense, but went even more.
But my two cents of seriousness anyway: High elo players aren’t the only people who play competitively, actually the 1600+ ELO is thetinyest chuck of the ranked playerbase. Making decisions solely based on their inputs isn’t valid simply because they aren’t the only players around, that would be bad design direction. And on top of that, being a high elo player doesn’t make you immune of giving bad insights (I will just briefly mention here the discussions about how auto scouting would break the game).
As bad as some balance suggestions may be, the inevitable discussions that they bring ends up enhancing general knowledge of game most of times.
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I think the devs usually do talk to the pros about ballance changes and having them as a second “forum”/discussion makes sense to me, but splitting this forum more would probably hurt more than help.
1600 DE is around 1850+ voobly level like 24++ HD, honestly i don’t think many on this forums would be able to post suggestions, that would be censorship and some guys here are extremely sensitive and get offended with inoffensive words.
But it would be good to display your ELO right next to ur Nick, so users can give an idea of the level of the player, so everybody can get a better reference but still that would be consider as passive discrimination for certain users and they would complain for sure.
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Does not even matter at this point, even Hera and Viper were wrong about the value of civs and their winrates prove it.
No one knows anything about balance in this game. Not the lower ELO players, neither the higher ELO players.
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What OP is asking for is in some sence already the case. If you listen to aoe streams, you might have heard, that there indeed exists a balance discord group, where a few top players, top streamers, WK developers and mapmakers have access to and discuss balance/game/bugfix suggestions/changes.
One might now ask why this isnt done openly visible for everyone. Well there have been bad experiences on aoczone with several failed balance patches, ppl being toxic/destructive etc, thats also why you will barely ever see one of the top players commenting on this forum.
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Hmm, if such a private balance group indeed exists, then maybe it is not doing proper work, when balance patches fail?..
I support whole community participating in discussions 
I’d say they’re doing a pretty good job if civ win rate is anything to go by, most of the civs are in the range of 45% - 55% win rate, in a game with such a wide selection of civilizations, I’d call that a miracle.
It is also pretty audacious of people to suggest that they can balance the game better than those whose job it is to do so, probably 99% of the suggestions that get posted on these forums are terrible and would launch civs into over/under powered territory pretty easily.
Every group is going to make mistakes, being good at a game doesn’t mean you are good at balancing it, game design is a separate skill and an entire area of study. If you let the entire community have input on balance, you’ll end up with a mess of a game.
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i think you misunderstoot. There were a few balance patches eg. voobly balancepatch, 1.0e balance patch, carlos ferdinand balance patch etc that failed. The group is doing a good job and gives the main imput for the balance changes and since they started doing it in WK the game only got better.
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Multiplayer experts are not the only player base, though they are the louder audience. Game needs to be equally good for every type of player.
The proportion of player base that categorize as average and new is much larger than those among them who are representing them in the forums.
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Players who play vs. AI or play no rush games mostly do not notice balance changes that much anyways. Unless a civ is changed from overall being completely out of proportion down to being completely useless…
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