[SUGGESTION] autobalance

So there are finally some players online, I played a few CTF matches, I realised that there is still no autobalance on servers or they are just not using it, so its the same old story.
2 guys go offline and everybody gets "teams are unbalanced" message in the corner on the screen which nobody notices or ignores until one teams captures 5 to 10 flags. Then somebody finally switches but its usually too late. From 4 matches I played 3 were ridiculous, it is incredibly disruptive.

Stuff like this can be only fixed by the players!
Auto"balance" is terrible.

welcome to nexuiz/xonotic!

only difference between player switching and autobalance is that that you need a volunteer, that could be immediately or never, autobalance would at least assure some basic sanity.

Red team vs. Blue team 6:1 in score, 4vs4.

Super good player joins the server.
He joins Blue (starts with 0 score of course).
Someone in Red leaves.
Super good player gets moved to Red.
Result: Probably 10:1

On Battlefield: Bad Company 2 the autobalance is not immediate on most of the servers, some warnings show up before it comes.

The server owner decides the amount of warnings and the time lapse between them.

Something like: "Warning: Autobalance will start shortly (warning 1/3)"
Owners set them to 2 secs, 5 secs or 10 secs and in that way there is the opportunity that a new player joins before the autobalance is done. If no one joins or switches the switching is then forced to the last teamjoiner.

I get your point, and you can rely in small games for players to play fair, but in larger games (5:5+) its hard to notice it and lots of times people see it but ignore it, you really cant rely on it.
So ok, if you dont wont autobalance, you could make the imbalance message more obvious or play some sound or perhaps a quick switch vote-like window to switch quickly and timeout limit after which server decides who gets switched.

edit
@forseti - yes something like that, you cant really on people to do something uncomfortable

How would you implement the autobalance algorithm?

if you are asking about technicals I have never seen xonotic code so I have no idea. (if thats the asnwer you wanted)

"And thus, upon the mere thought of the word b*lance, Yog-Soggoth rose from the depths of space and time, and descended upon the Internet, his wrath matched only with God's. This led to many, many weak minds either loosing their senses or loosing their senses and setting their own balances in a coded word, for quite some time to be stored on the Internet. Those, Yog-Soggoth visits personally when they're about to die."
The Book of FPesea Moderna, 4:12-15.

To keep up balanced teams it could be a possibility to fill the gap of leaving players with a bot. This bot would automatically disappear if a new player joined the match. New players would be forced to join the team with the bot, so that balance is established.
But I would recommend a message that the teams are not balanced, too.

This could be a server setting like "enhancement of team balance".

How about doing this: When the player count gets unbalanced (difference between teams being more than one) then automatically pause the game until the situation is resolved.. This allows the players to figure out the best way to resolve the imbalance without having some algorithm that makes the wrong choice..

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Oh and do not pause the game immediately when the balance is off. Maybe do a little countdown (like 30 seconds). Players get a warning that the teams are unbalanced. Then start the countdown. Only if it isn't resolved before the countdown is finished pause the game..

I think this way could be abused (/trolled) if you just go in spectate mode.
Example: 5vs4 and someone in the team with 4 players spectates. Then later on someone switches and then the guy rejoins to have 4vs5.
OR he just trolls to make the game paused.

Mirio: Well, is this any worse than trolling by simply screwing up team balance by itself? In both cases the game gets discrupted. Just imagine the situation without the game pausing. Still trolling

and btw you actually CAN join the larger team, this just sucks

Maybe we should animate people to join the opposing team by giving an extra-scorepoint?

In my opinion it's best to force players to police themselves (something the Nex/Xon community has proven to be very capable of) and occasionally have admins check their servers. Autobalance in almost every game I've seen with it has been problematic to say the least, and in the case of Siege XXL for Unreal Tournament, and good tool for trolling as people will find ways to abuse and exploit it.