The balancer has always had some issues. I actually intended to fix the issues before ever starting a CTF server and that is why there is a combo DM server but since the CTF server I was playing on at the time kept going down for extended periods of time I just went ahead and made the CTF servers anyway.
Finding the time to work on the fixes has now become the problem. Each time I start to work on it again something else pops up requiring immediate attention. It is still high on the list of a million other things that need attention so at some point you should see some improvements with this.
The only reason the balancer is required is because so many players leave or join during a match that without it the teams could become so lopsided (no challenge for one team and no chance for the other) everyone would just leave. It actually does a good job at the initial team balance but fails to update properly as people come and go during the match. There are, of course, many other problems with it but that is the main issue and I won't bore everyone by listing them all.
If after getting switched you leave, you just make the situation worse as this will cause someone else to also be moved. Idling isn't good either as this hurts both teams, one isn't challenged and the other pretty much has no chance, unless the balance is bad even after the move which does happen sometimes. If you really don't care whether you win or lose it would be good to just stick around after you get moved and play the rest of the match. Eventually, everyone gets moved and is expected to just live with it.
I don't actually have a rule against typing teams all the time because I can't blame the players that do this for the bugs in the balancer but I do have rules against team balance abuse. Typing !r !b all the time, especially when always switching to the winning team, or even going to spec and typing teams and then returning (when not done to fix a very bad balance) are examples of this abuse.
I have at least 25 permanent bans for this behavior. You will notice I let it slide for a while, like in this case with the lisa player, until their motives of team balance abuse are abundantly clear and then I start with a 1-day, then a 3-day, and finally a 7-day ban if the behavior continues before it becomes a permanent ban. If this happens to you take your 1-day ban as a warning and don't do it anymore. I don't bother with kicks and in game warnings for this as they just get ignored and it should be obvious to the player that what they are doing when winning team switching is not reasonable or fair behavior.
lisa's 1-day ban will start tomorrow. If you see them doing it again the day after feel free to let them know that the 3-day ban will be next but you'll probably be wasting your time.
By the way, you can bind a key to this: mutate atb teamstrength which will give you the team strength in white text in the chat area to see the current balance without having to type teams all the time which seems to annoy some people 🙂. Any strength difference less than 50 is currently about as good as the balancer can predictably do mid-game and therefore I wouldn't take the gamble of typing teams when they are this close already because it can actually make the teams worse (another issue that needs fixed).
