One of my favorite comments is when people can't put a finger on what genre the game is. That tells me I'm on the right track with pushing design boundaries, so thank you so much!
And no worries, I appreciate the thorough feedback. One way I try to balance is to actually create imbalance and have the player solve for different stages. But you're right that in this version with the 3 stages, eventually most people figure out splitter has to go at the bottom :P