Here are some statements that don't say "everyone thinks" or crap like that. I understand why you don't know how the majority of people have played.
FF on may be a detriment to teams with total novices, but it also adds some key changes to keep the following in check: three aliens close together in a hallway slashing about. It can be impossible to dodge a few rants closing you in, but a glimmer of hope comes from the fact that they will often swipe each other a time or two; the flamer or lucy spammers who just fire away (as these weapons are powerful and easy to use when being careful isn't a requirement; cheap nades dropped in a huddle of humans, making an alien pay the price for being aggressive and trying to take on a group at once (Oops! surprise nade, at least the humans will suffer some from this? Nope.)
Having ff on allows for tactical team-killings, such as a player needing to get back to base in a hurry, or needing to spawn as a c-kit when the armory is down.
Let's face it: aiming isn't nearly as coveted a skill since the dawn of unlagged, and now the gap between mediocre players and legends is seldom found in the sector of marksmanship. The difference has been that a good player kills aliens, while a great player kills aliens without forcing his teammates to use the medkit early.
Killing battle grangers and blastering goofballs before they feed "that one player" on the other team a goon or chainsuit is always a plus.
History has taught us that most servers will use friendly fire. Before we had some squabbles over the game being unlagged, when it was designed to be played with ping in consideration. That's been fixed, as you are now developing the game for use with unlagged, since we know that will be a standard. I find the same to be true of friendly fire. If servers are likely to be using g_friendlyfire 1 almost all of the time, it makes a lot more sense to have the game balanced to match that than to balance it for ff off and have a game running everywhere in a way it wasn't designed to be played.
I think if you are going to change to testing with ff sometime, you should change it in the middle of a "phase" that you already find to be somewhat stable, so that you know what to change *before* the next phase has begun. Plus, if you start it at the beginning of another phase, and things don't turn out the way you thought, you will be left to wonder if it's the ff or something different that's throwing off the balance. In short, isolate the variable by adding it by itself rather than in a clump of other (shitty tremulous.h changes)stuff.
