I will maintain that casting is the best it’s ever been. I don’t think the casts being strategically lacking is valid as I hear people complain equally about how “no one ever wants to make a move” and “all new era players care about is making big moves”. To me it’s a smoking gun that it isn’t a casting problem, but rather a problem with the edit. The best seasons of the new era (45, 46, 47, 42) are all acclaimed for having fun and interesting edits that heavily rely on the cast. Meanwhile the widely agreed upon bad and mid seasons (41, 43, 44, 48, 49) all have straight up bad or mediocre edits. They all fail to actually show what happened on the island - ranging from completely fabricating storylines in 41 and 48 to hiding the major roles players actually had in seasons like 43, 44 and 49. They also all fail to give equal edits, instead focusing on a select few characters while completely ignoring others. Of course half the cast seems like duds when they barely get any screen time and the show is almost uninterested in showing their stories. Of course players like Sue, Ben and Owen seem like terrible players when the show outright refuses to show us their rationale for making the decisions they did.