Yup, totally agree Ryz, and yesterday I experienced that firsthand on a Lakeside game I was commanding on GDI. All the new players were on GDI and we were just getting spawn-sniped and locked in base. We did try every single rush/strategy/teamwork possible on lakeside to no avail, as dtdesign mentioned, there was no prospect of winning. Every rush was getting slaughtered, and the game ending was more of a relief (and you know there's a problem when you're just happy the game ended).
Some suggestions:
1- Press to start ( as suggested by Snow) to avoid AFKs in the beginning of the game (where one team will have more AFKs than the other)
2- Until autobalancing can be properly implemented, implement manual moderator balancing at peak times. I know this means a person needs to manually do that, but I think this only needs to be done at peak times.
3- In my opinion, this issue is URGENT, we're losing prospective players just so a select few can get their fun, and between this and the DDOS, it can get very frustrating for someone who wants to get into the game, which hinders the growth of this community