At this point, I don't have much of a preference in the autobalance, nonautobalance argument. I think there's a lot to be said for trying to get numbers up at first (which demands "even" teams) and then worry about the other stuff.

However, longevity seems to benefit from "cliques" as you so artfully put it. Those who work together with small groups are far more likely to stay and appreciate the game long term. There are a number of reasons this is true:

1. Small numbered groups make doing tactics easier. Yes, it's true that the game in general will get progressively better as we learn more and more about the game. However, this pales in significance to those few people who learn to team up with each other regularly. These types of things demand a certain level of sophistication that mere "pub" play usually doesn't achieve.

2. Competition breeds good game play. I'm not just speaking of the competition that comes from balanced teams (although this is true), but I'm also talking about rivalry.

3. Rivalry also increases interest. There's rivalry on the small scale: I want to beat X player because he's good. But there's also rivalry on a bigger scale: I want to beat group A because they're good. The larger the scale of the rivalry, the more interest gets generated.

TF2 is intriguing because it exists in sort of a space between the battlefields and our smaller games. I think we need to approach it as such. Those of us from BF2/2142 can't treat it like our 50-64 player servers, and those from the smaller games can't treat it like a tiny server.