Dota has an interesting approach. They collect tons of statistics, but ultimately the game design comes down to one person, and they complement the stats with a lot of interviews with top ranked players to get their subjective perspective.
The end result is the game has gotten better balanced continuously with time. There were a handful of patches that were a regression, but usually are on top of it pretty fast.
One of the more pernicious problems they've faced is the team that holds the base on the bottom half of the map has consistently had an advantage, as much as 5%. This appears to be related to the perspective being 3d in the shape of top down, vs a literal 2d top down view. They've tried a few different ways to balance this, but what's ended up working best is trading it off vs first pick in the lineup drafting phase of the game start.
Zynga was infamous for a stats driven approach, but there it was all about tricking people into maxing out the micro transactions :(
The end result is the game has gotten better balanced continuously with time. There were a handful of patches that were a regression, but usually are on top of it pretty fast.
One of the more pernicious problems they've faced is the team that holds the base on the bottom half of the map has consistently had an advantage, as much as 5%. This appears to be related to the perspective being 3d in the shape of top down, vs a literal 2d top down view. They've tried a few different ways to balance this, but what's ended up working best is trading it off vs first pick in the lineup drafting phase of the game start.
Zynga was infamous for a stats driven approach, but there it was all about tricking people into maxing out the micro transactions :(