In a game that relies upon your acumulated score (ie ranked), your score for a round is important and allows you to unlock all of this stuff that increases teamplay. In a game like this where most people are the random pubbie, you can see the complaining that goes on about a simple start timer before the round. And that doesn't even affect gameplay. FF being on completely changes gameplay for the Recon kit, and most pubbies won't recigonize it. The people on the recieveing end of the blast get one death, the ones placing that mine get -3 I believe, not counting punishes.

As for not using them in high traffic areas, you can't even use them in low-traffic areas. For all the pubbies that get kicked for not playing as a team because they don't read the loading messages or the scrolling server messages ingame, do you think they will see this message before they run into a mine and punish?

Now, don't get me wrong, I fully support having FF on, but having it on a ranked pubbie-filled server, it isn't going to be obayed by all members. A few misfits can run over all the mines in the world and do their damage before they are reported, and the damage is done. On a server like PoE2 or TacMod, we have teamplaying pubbies that listen and enjoy our rules, and same with 2142, just they are a much lesser consentration on the 2142 server compared with the passer-bys. Those teamplaying pubbies enjoy realism, and that is why they make the trip to our unranked servers. Here they still make the trip because of the amazing teamplay, just we get a much bigger mix of players as a result of going ranked.

FF on unranked = great
FF on ranked pubbie-heaven = great if it everybody knew about it, horrible if people don't. I'm up for trying it and wouldn't have a problem if everybody understood it, but I stay skeptical that it will be accepted by the masses that inhabit the server.