Data analysis/science has its place in a game imo. Balance is important (but equality of all strategies and classes should NEVER be the goal in a game, it's a r

Data analysis/science has its place in a game imo. Balance is important (but equality of all strategies and classes should NEVER be the goal in a game, it's a recipe for staleness). In general though, people are terrible at using data properly. You can look at a spreadsheet and see that a particular faction is underperforming at high ELO, but a blind buff to damage or economy will often not be the correct move. Similar to how single player campaign difficulty settings will sometimes just be a glorified multiplier on enemy attack/health. A proper difficulty setting changes enemy behavior. There is a story everywhere that there is data, but people tend to be way better at sorting a column in Excel and sending an email about it than they are at investigating (and effectively communicating) the underlying story. Games (and businesses) need less analysts, and more scientists.