Cvars splitting the community up?

I'm not going to claim that the ESF community is one, big, strong happy family, but now that I hear that most people will be getting a whole bunch of cvars for ESF to change gameplay, i'm a little dismayed.

Sure, we have the cvar to increase and decrease 1.2 melee speed. I wouldn't agree that this should be done, but I seriously doubt that making it faster or slower would become popular enough to cause a massive schism.

Then there's the cvar to switch back to good ole "i twitch my mouse better than you can" 1.1. If you like 1.1, good and great for you, but when 1.2 comes out, what's to stop the very people who don't wish to be defeated in a new system from just ignoring it entirely and essentially playing the exact same game they've been playing for months?

Would there be any point to 1.2 then, except for having, of course, bug fixes and smoother animations? And on another note, what happens when we have half the people playing "1.1 bug fix" and 1.2. They'd be entirely different games. Oh well, so it goes. Hopefully most people will actually embrace a melee system that levels the playing field, as opposed to 1.1's "Mouse Olympics".

let s just see how it works. I have no doubt that eventually the biggest part of the community will switch. There are still people who play 1.1 as alpha 2.0 or people who even play alpha 2.0!! so it doesnt really matter i think!!

Uhm , sorry for my n00bish english but ~ what is "cvar" ?
But i completely agree with all points i get from this thread ~

cvar is a server setting with which you can enable/disable/change certain aspects of the game. like a melee lock

Actually there not two totally different game's. 1.2 will still have beams and melee, just the melee will be different. That doesn't make them two different game's, 1.2 is a patch to 1.1. Just like 1.1 was a patch for 1.0, they are made to fix bugs and add features to your previous gameplay.

I dont see why you even had to post that, there's really no point to it. And "a bunch of mouse movements", thats what melee has always been like. Your "mouse movements" determine your skill, it will be the same in 1.2. Mouse movement is your aim, if you have good mouse movements then you will be a good player. If you think down to the nitty gritty of any game there all just "tapping buttons and mouse movements". And yes, there is a point to 1.2, to give the esf community more fun in-game. 1.2 will have alot of new features, and of course the ESF team wont stop making new patches till ESF is essentially 'perfectyl like DBZ'. Everyone is looking forward to 1.2, I get the feeling your not. But your choice is your choice. ;D

Man, I think you guys are making a much larger deal out of this than should be made.

As of right now, the speed for charge time and melee is set at a specific speed. The whole idea of having the charge times as cvars was to benefit the community so that if you thought it was too slow, which a lot of people seem to, you can change it.

Now people are complaining about the cvars. I think you guys just always want something to complain about.

I agree with ET, especially since you guys haven't even played 1.2 and don't know what these cvars will be exactly like, it'd make more sense to state your complaints once 1.2 is out.

Would there be anything to talk about if there where no complaints ?

sigh... you're all missing the point.

This isn't a complaint that says "oh my gosh, i hate the new stuff" or "oh my gosh, giving us control of stuff is horrible, you guys are so selfish".

The point is that having different cvars can lead to having a million and one servers. Alright, let me take that back, there won't be a million servers, but what I'm saying is that with the cvars, there's a chance that many of the servers will be different from each other.

1.1 versus 1.2. To say they are not different is foolish. Yes, it's beams and melee in both, but the function of the melee is very different. In one, it's very mouse dependent. The other will require a few extra steps to win. That's not exactly 'similar'. They are very different. Same method of attack? Yes. Same game? No. Not at all.

So, as I was saying, it doesn't matter if I haven't played it yet. This isn't about playing it at all. I'm the kind of guy who feels that if everyone is going to play the game, we might as well play it the same. Otherwise, I go to server 1, and it plays one way. Then I go to server 2, and there's no similarity. How can we even come back to the boards and discuss how we play, or what we do? We can't if everyone is playing a 'customized' version of the game. The differences may be small, but that's all it takes. So now we can't even have a discussion (in some cases), because we're not playing the same type of game. That's what I meant. However, it seems that doesn't really concern anyone. And so, my voice was not heard... :smile:

Right now all of what you are saying is total speculation. *Realistically speaking* people don't screw around with the cvars unless they want to set up a special server. Most people who run dedicated servers try not to be controversial and leave everything set to default. This isn't going to change just because more cvars will be floating around. Servers who want to tweak themselves will still tweak themselves and servers who don't want to screw around and get complaints from players will leave their servers vanilla plain.

Also note that 1.2 is going to be *advertised.* It'll be a huge step up from 1.1 from a technical stand-point and it'll bring in an influx of new players looking for something interesting and unique. More players means more servers. More servers means more options. The 1.2 cvars are just not going to break the community apart. In a worst-case scenario you end up playing on a server with melee set to fast for you, and you adapt, because adapting to shifts in the gaming environment shows skill on your behalf. There is a difference between conditioning yourself to make magic happen at 1 speed with 1 kind of melee and just being a quick "skillful" player. Don't spread yourself too thin.

I can see where your going with this.
One server you go to could be really fast, the next really slow. The host could tip the scale to his favour, where as in 1.1 virtually all servers were alike, and you could practice something you could expect everywhere else, where as in 1.2 you could practice a thing to face something totally sped up in another server. ;/ Although, i admit i dont see it splitting up the community.