Now i’m probably not the only person in this game who has a lot of issues with the vote to shuffle system, but I do have a deep frustration when ever it gets called and actually passes. Now i do understand that the point of it is to balance teams based on skill level (Although that is very vague on what skill it looks into), but the amount of games that I join in where its a good defense or a strong offence just causes people to just start spamming the vote to shuffle just to ruin the game for every one else who gets flipped teams. While there are a few moments where ill accept a vote, a majority of the time i just hit f2 and move on.https://youtube.com/watch?v=0HFHysniQa4 While I make a joke in the video i just linked I share my experience just how bad a shuffle can get. I want to know some of your experences with shuffle in the past and what you think you can make it better.
Vote to Shuffle and why its a mess
Problem with shuffle (or even MM), besides noobs calling it for stupid reasons, is that most of the time it doesn’t really change anything. If there are a couple of good players and a bunch of noobs on a server, it will always end up being the same matchup of good players and it will just shuffle the noobs around.
MM and shuffles should have a bit more randomness imo, and not always end up with pretty much the same teams every time.
There are several annoying things:
Team A (5 players) vs Team B (3 players] Team B wants to vote shuffle. Gets denied by Team A including comments like l2p, scrubs and so on. Level 80 guy joins. Starts to rip Team A apart. Team A starts to vote shuffle.
Team A (well balanced mixture of mercs) vs Team B (everbody playes Thunder, Phantom, Vassili): Team B calls vote shuffle.
Last minute of a somewhat balanced game: Losing team calls vote shuffle.
And my favorit: Stopwatch on Bridge. Starting as attacker. It takes ages to complete first objective. After that your team finds its grove. Completes the EV part and delivers an objective. 2 minutes before the end of the round a vote shuffle passes. You end up in the other team and have to do the EV repair again.
I really dont know how to improve the vote shuffle thing, because there are so many factors that can make it justified or unjustified.
Something really has to be done with the shuffle.
Whenever players see they can’t win the game they start calling it, or when they see there is high lvl player playing against them. Just today when i was playing stopwatch there was a guy crying that we have a cheater in the team. He was pressing shuffle all the time and 2 min before the end of the game it passed and i was kicked to the other team and lost. when the game was over and he left the lobby i asked if he tried to kick the guy who was supose to be the cheater -> they said no! 
I understand that shuffle is needed sometimes. There have been times where my or the other team couldn’t even get out of the spawn place or where you have a team playing with 3 and the other with 6 players. But in those caseses even if you press shuffle it wont pass because people just want easy kills and to win the game the easy way. They simply don’t care.
I think the best solution would be if it would cost you to kick or shuffle teams. I mean with ingame currency.
The general rule in this game: When a vote is needed, it doesn’t pass. But then a vote isn’t needed, it’s being spammed and mostly passes.
Team shuffle will be gone in the near future, when casual matchmaking is introduced.
Maybe it still would be present in some servers (7v7, 8v8) or can be an option in the also upcoming community servers.
As for it’s current status: it can balance the game better, it can make it worse or it can make no difference at all; seems completely random to me, not “by skill”.
Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s annoying, mainly depending on your mood. 
I just did, as Bushwhacker, on Bridge, on a min lvl 10 server, a sneaky full EV repair straight out of wave one. Server was full, everyone was loaded, just 7 blind people didn’t see me jumping out of the building across and repairing the EV for 10+ seconds 
What pops up a few moments later? A “Restart Map” vote of course. Well fuck you, enemy team. Luckily it didn’t pass.
@shock I secktorus in that video. I had a big falling out with him earlier today after he didn’t care about my team getting stomped, but when the tables started turning, oh god the votes.
I’m betting he’s the asshole doing it in this vid too!
The best shuffled games I have had has been when it’s shuffle after maybe 2/3 minutes. This gives the team time and, really it’s pretty easy to see if it does need shuffling within that time.
After that though, it’s just a waste. There should be a cut off point to the shuffling, I’d say about 4 mins into a match.
Not that it matters as pub MM is coming, and likely the shuffle will be removed.
I like to shuffle as soon as the game starts, because people are still joining / leaving while the map is loading. The only time I vote no on a shuffle is in the last 5 mins of a match, when it’s too late to change anything. I hate the people that call it, it passes, they’re still getting stomped, and they call it again 
@DarkMatterMatt It’s not like theres a restart vote for exactly those situations or anything.
True But I find that people are even less likely to vote to restart the map than they are to shuffle. I have literally never seen a restart map pass
I often ask for restart after a shuffle in the first minute of a game, then we have balanced teams and nobody feels injured.
They need to disable shuffle if it already passes and nobody leaves or join, because it ends to a swap between teams, and no shuffle. It’s just annoying when you go from defender to attacker and then again. Defuse your own C4 is good for xp, but annoying.
It should not permit shuffle if teams are already balanced.
And when the game would be near the end, the shuffle should also be disabled.
My fav:
When a player call a 2nd vote shuffle (and passes) in an attempt to “fix” the 1st one.
A little more randomness, perhaps (at least on pubs)…
Abbadon
Abaddon
The biggest problem I have with vote to shuffle is that voting is bound to the same key as the keys to switch to your first and second merc. This means that if a team loses the first half of a stopwatch and calls a vote, if you don’t notice it then you could vote yes if you wanted to switch to your first slot merc.
Happened to me yesterday after a sick hold with my team defending on bridge, they never even reached the ramp.
They got salty and started a vote as I was switching to proxy to help play the objective.
I got switched.
I promptly lost to myself.
Necks On pls
After every successful vote to shuffle, I am morbidly curious about how many successive votes it would take to actually get a balanced game…