When people are talking about how balance ruins fun, what they are in reality talking about how streamlining ruins fun. Latter is also what Sawyer does, with a religious zeal that it is to detriment of balance even. When your game is a combination of trap choices and faceroll builds that is not fun. A well-balanced game doesn't mean lower character power or options, it just means that you don't have things that lets you effortlessly push through the game and with your only input was knowing the avoid the trap choices.
PoE wasnt balanced at all, ironically enough
The reason it wasnt fun is cause of stuff like Endurance (disrupts the normal flow of combat), per encounter abilities (makes every fight the same), microscopic +0.03% stat growth (no sense of growth) and mobs that give 0xp (punishing the player)
streamlining and accessibility are Soyer's sins, not balance