[Actual serious post, please consider for at least 2 seconds before explaining why my continued existence is a detriment to society]
So I've been browsing the balance discussions on discord for a few months now, and reading the latest few pages it actually struck me how much discussions had degraded. Sure, it's not like discord balance threads were ever a pinnacle of rational discourse, but the early to mid threads used to have a fair bit of engagement from higher rated players, developers, and otherwise relevant parties. I mean sure, you could say that most of it were people coming in to shit on whatever position FTX happened to be taking, but the important thing was that it generated useful discussion to work off of.
I was reading the latest thread and this is what it looked like.
[Image removed to prevent witch hunting]
You might think that this is a biased sample, but that post has 200+ posts and the entire thread, without exaggeration, is that cycle of comments the whole way through. And it's not like this is an isolated incident. Every thread in the last few pages looks like this or has 0 comments.
[Though to be fair to LoliNekoTrap, he is the OP]
The point I'm trying to raise is that despite the certainty that many of the lower rated players in these discussions are trying their best to contribute, they are simply incapable of doing so. The threshold of having an original, nuanced, and relevant opinion on any given subject is a phenomenally high one that I don't think most people are capable of properly appreciating, and I think that the prevalence of these useless, derailing, "helpful" commentary from 1ks are driving away actual potential contributors who don't want to scroll through 300 comments to see if Tagada or Farms said anything that requires them to add onto.
At the same time, I think a lot of minor, niche or otherwise creative ideas come from lower rated players who are viewing a problem from a fresh angle, so here's the proposal:
Anyone should be able to create a balance suggestion or discussion post, provided they pass whatever minimal criteria already established.
From there, only people above a certain threshold (whatever may be established idk) can actually comment on the discussion post.
As to the logistics, allow a simple automated system allowing people to declare their credentials to comment and filter out anyone who breaks the rules, rather than try to individually admit players into the discussion, to minimize moderator workload.
This measure is less about stopping lower rated players from participating in these discussions, and more about allowing higher rated players to once again feel that these discussions have any meaning whatsoever that won't be drowned by the absolute cesspool of idiocy that drowns out any insightful posts and responds not to reason nor argument. I truly believe that this is the largest reason of balance discussions being perceived as a useless meme channel, and the major deterrent to improvement.
This is for discord because I don't know how this forum works with regards to restricting posting access, but could work here too.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk (aka what not having aeolus does to a mf)