Don't think this is a good idea:
- Balance implications affect all games, not just 1v1. This can have ruinous consequences for other game modes. FAF for instance only has to worry about 1v1 - 4v4, which is a lot different than 1v1 - 16v16.
- Balance changes are more likely to be not about making the game "more fun" and more likely to become about skewing balance around a set of players who have interest in their strategies working, thus keeping them in the "balance league" longer. Additionally they're likely to nerf strategies that work against them. Contrast this to developer goals who are mostly player centric (IE: make the game more fun). Consider a situation where players find an exploit in the balance that gets them a big advantage (let's say terraforming fast build DDMs or something). In this circumstance some players in this group of 10 might find this to be "fun" for whatever reason, but the rest of the player base complains constantly. Whatever rules you have to prevent the circle jerk may work against you in this situation.
- Arguably, top x% of players don't represent the rest of the playerbase in terms of usability or accessibility. Consider the myriad of units that can thwart newbie access to the game: Sniper/lance firing at radar dots, etc. If game was balanced around a set of users who use specific nondefault settings, this creates a larger gap in usability for the rest of the 95% who don't have/are aware of these poweruser options. This is not an acceptable outcome for longevity.
- Lastly, balance should really not be a social metagame gatekept behind some mode that less than 10% of the player base (assuming 1670 is the total actual players active right now) actually play.
