How could it punish afkers since they are not there?
I really don't get what you're meaning.
Only good argument I've seen so far for it to stay is that it annoys campers.
My insistence on getting this fixed comes from hide and seek. Where this bug is a pain in the ass.
In hide and seek you often have to stay in a spot, waiting for the seeker.
Your attention is focused on your environment. So if your soldier goes idle and begins to smoke, you won't see it.
Once the seeker arrives you will begin pressing the movement keys to run away.
And then you have the bad surprise of having your soldat stuck like an idiot.
The moment you realize he's idle, it's too late, you're dead.
To prevent this, people in hns tend to keep pushing nade or punch all the time while they're waiting. Which btw looks completely retarded.
But the worst part is that by keeping punching, they often makes their fellow hiders fall down.
tl;dnr:
This bug obviously isn't a big deal in ctf.
But it is a real nuisance in hns.