[innovacious]

You don't get banned for joining spec. You get banned for switching teams (including spec) after getting balanced.

What about the situation where you are autobalanced, and pretty quickly, your team gets up to 16, where your old team is up to 15? I've actually had that happen a few times before and swapped back to my old team.

This, i dont really see whats wrong with switching back if the other team has less players and you didnt switch to spec to acheive it. I do it, and the vast majority of the time its because i enjoy the company of the team i was on. Pretty much anyone who has seen me play can tell you i dont really give a crap about winning or losing, so its not really stacking. But i guess the wants of one player dosnt stand up against all people who dont like stackers...

TBH, i dont really care about stackers. Kind of counter-intuitive to say "no, sorry, you guys cannot work as a team with your friends in this team game". Thats one of the few things that actually works with matchmaking style games, you can play as a team with friends. But lets not go into that right now.