I've changed the information in these files and it never recognizes the change. Well no, I shouldn't say that because every now and then if I vote the map in from the menu it'll load w/ the settings I gave/changed. It's strange...sometimes it recognizes it and sometimes it doesn't.
what settings are you trying to change? To check to see if your cfg file loaded (instead of say the one with the waypoints) add something you can test for (I set g_gravity and then can test for it).
As to the respawn times and matchtime in Arena files I don't know what the logic is as to precedence (since these are also set in the script file) but then again you could just be dealing with a sv_pure 1 vs 0 issue, so I suggest you try those first.
K, it seems to work when I change it in the script file or just make one if there isn't one (spawntime/timelimit) but there is still the pesky intermission and warmup deal though it's not biggy...just be nice to get it low and stay that way.
Don't know about the warmup it seems to be minimum 30 for me when I try to disable/shorten it. As to the arena file the tutorial says that the spawn and match time are there just for UI display