[B-Boy]

Well, I dunno exactly what it is, and I have a hunch, but it's not just me that thinks the quality of play on the public server has dropped to a very low point.
It seems populated by some very noobish players who don't play like a team, and it's not surprising that a lot of us are finding it very tiring and not as fun.
Obviously, as you get better. you want to play with better players, but the fragmasters public server always seemed to offer that.
It could be that this all talk business is really putting the better players off, and you can hardly blame them. It could be that auto-assigning teams has put the more regular players off, because like it or not, some people like to play with their friends in a "team" game.
Half the fun of old was having an understanding with your team-mates, not just people you knew ofcourse, but people you could talk to without fear your enemy would hear, or people that you knew you had a good understanding with and so wanted to rejoin them for the next map, whether they were in fm! or not.
I really hope this drive for auto-assigning teams (which doesn't initially seem such a bad idea) isn't preventing non-fm! friends who like to play together as a team from joining anymore.
Maybe it's completely unrelated. But maybe it's not. I've not seen the public seem so unrewarding as this before.
The all talk issue needs addressing promptly. A full server doesn't necessarily mean a fun server for those that love it.

ps. It's almost like it's become a counterstrike source server, everyone for themselves, points mean everything! Teamfortress 2 has the word "team" in it. Some people might like to play with their friends in a team. This is not always possible at the moment. I've spoken to quite a few people about this, and they all seem to agree, that if, as friends, a few of us joined the public server for the first time now, saw all talk was on, played on some map called Stag, saw that we couldn't join the same team and witnessed the quality of play, we'd just go somewhere else more accomodating.