In general, it felt the community was getting smaller, but this is now being turned around.
Regarding balance, a lot of people don’t appreciate that doing the minimal possible is often best for the game. Classic competitive games like Starcraft Brood War or Magic the Gathering made extremely few changes for most of their life cycle. Having a baseline that doesn’t change allows players to be more creative, instead of complaining until the dev fixes stuff.
I admit I also quite like the League of Legends model of very regular patches, as it’s fun and keeps things fresh, but purely in terms of making a good game, it’s not necessarily the best way.
Maybe the best thing would be more updates with stuff like daily challenges and boss fights, instead of balance stuff. I really miss the daily challenges…