Hello all, I’m new here. I just wanted to say how much I love this game, and share a little experience I had recently.
I started playing ET almost as soon as it was released, and over time, like most of you, I learned the game inside out. I’ve become a reasonably good player, never played in a clan because I’ve never been asked and I’m not about to go bugging clans if they want a new member. I figure if anyone ever sees anything they like in me, they’ll ask. Anyway, I know the game well, including all it’s cvars. After a while, my config became as tweaked as could possibly be; picture the most extreme configs you’ve ever seen at the Config Repository, and that was me. I also had several scripts for various purposes that I either made or found existing and usable. Things such as spawntimers, complete vsay menus, toggles for nearly everything possible, fancy team/class/spawn changers, etc.
I always would delete my config and restart the game to go back to defaults for watching demos and making movies, which I also got into a little, but I couldn’t imagine playing like that again; I’d feel like I wasn’t on equal ground with all the other tweakers and was at a disadvantage. Then about a month ago I began to wonder: just how much of my ability is dependent upon my extreme tweaks, and how much is genuine skill? So I began an experiment - I forced myself to not change a single setting that can’t be changed in the game menu. This was not easy I can assure you! I was always catching myself going for the console key, like an addict reaching for the needle. I had to keep reminding myself of the experimental mindset I was placing myself in; that of a complete newbie who just discovered the game. Framerate? What’s that? Field of view? Huh?
Then a funny thing began to happen: my fake ignorance started to become real bliss! Sure, at first I would shudder every time I saw the rain on radar, knowing how many useless tris were slurping up my frames like a sponge. And every time I wanted to jump up onto a box, I had to remind myself, “wait, that’s not possible. I was only able to do it because I was taking advantage of a quirk in the engine. Those boxes were never meant to be jumped on, and at my default 85 FPS cap (matching my monitor refresh rate), it ain’t gonna happen”.
All kinds of similar things began to happen. Every time I got owned, it would bother me and I’d wonder if perhaps I would have won that duel if that artillery explosion in the distance hadn’t sapped my FPS down to 30 at the critical moment. But then again, that explosion looks pretty damned awesome! And the little subtle puffs of material when you shoot a wall, or the dirt raising up from the ground. Those cool ejected shells, man that looks nice! And hey, cg_fov 90 felt like I was humping the leg of my opponents in 1v1 duels, but I got used to it, and actually grew to like the added detail I was seeing!
And when I lost all my one key vsays, I realized the majority of my chatter was more spam than usefull. Having to type “v57” reminded me that I was mostly using it as a form of “trash talk”, and I cut down the vsay spam drastically.
To sum it all up, I was starting to remember why I began playing shooters to begin with - they look fucking great. The immersion is a huge part of the appeal, and I’d lost it by looking at the game as a competition, where performance was everything, and I had to have mine go as fast as the next guys, or he might beat me. But this experiment has taught me a few things. For one, yes the tweaks were indeed a crutch of sorts; the fact is I’m not as good as I once was. On the other hand, I’m not half bad, either. The skill doesn’t go away, you just lose the “edge” the extreme tweaks give you. When you’re crouching along and your view is bobbing around like a duck, you lose that little extra advantage. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter! In fact, I find myself enjoying the game like I did when I really was a newbie. Everything looks vibrant and has depth again.
Anyway, I’m sorry for writing a book as my first post and looking a bit nutty I’m sure, but I just wanted Splash Damage to know that I certainly appreciate all the hard work you put into making ET a visually appealing game, as well as just damned fun to play. Some of us (a lot of us) have pushed all that aside in favor of ego and a need to be the best. I’d almost like to see the leagues enforce cvar values that are only changeable in the game menu, and only within the range available in that menu (r_gamma has a max of 3, but the menu only goes to 2, for example). I think it would be interesting to see if others are relying as much on their crutches as I was…
Finally, I’m certainly not saying you should all do what I did, to each his own. But maybe just play a few games with the default config sometime and see how nice it looks 
PS - In case you’re wondering why I’m ruminating about a video game, it’s because it’s 2 in the afternoon on a nice sunny saturday and I’ve been out in the yard sipping on ice cold Heineken’s between rounds of ET all morning…
:drink: 
