Been playing for about a year and a half... It seems to me that team balance has always been affected in multiple almost independent ways. Obviously if a new player knows a current player, that will bias their team selection significantly. The part that concerns me is the completely new player, who just found out about the game and decided to give it a try, is asked to choose sides permanently with no indications which side might be better or worse in any way. My choice of Resistance was mostly because I like blue better... glad I chose how I did but I had no idea when I started.