Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Difference between revisions

Content added Content deleted
VisualWikitext
m (update links)
m (clean up)
Line 1:
{{trope}}
[[File:kenroster_lulzkenroster lulz.jpg|link=Street Fighter IV|right]]
{{quote|''We all know players who'll just look sadly at their newly-dead dwarf, Snorri Goblinkiller III, cross out the name, and start playing with Snorri Goblinkiller IV. These types of gamers can only do one thing: [[Our Dwarves Are All the Same|a Scottish accent]].''|'''Alan Lenczycki'''}}
 
Line 7:
But when it comes to familiarity, all of that wouldn't matter.
 
Nine times out of ten, gamers will become attached to one mode/stage/ruleset/character choice, such that they may lose sight of the other options available. [['''Complacent Gaming Syndrome]]''' occurs when the player is not able to break out of their comfort zone of control and continues to use the same exact settings for every match onward. This could be because they have found a supposedly unbeatable strategy, or because they feel the need to sacrifice other features for [[Competitive Balance]], or because they simply love those settings and feel that other settings are really un-enjoyable at best.
 
In [[Board Game]] circles, if a gaming group wind up doing this for a particular strategy, it's known as Group Think, and seems to occur when a group collectively decides on a 'best' strategy for a game, however balanced that strategy is against other strategies - The best remedy to it is simply to introduce new blood into the gaming group, or at least for some members of the group to play the game with another group and pick up some new tricks to introduce back into the gaming group suffering from it. Alternatively it could simply be a [[Game Breaker]] that wasn't discovered in play testing.
 
Compare [[Just Here for Godzilla]]. When players try to enforce their specific playstyle onto others, they become [[Scrub|Scrubs]]s or [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys]].
 
The trope for limited player use of characters/weapons/techniques in [[Video Games]] is at [[Player Preferred Pattern]]. The trope for limited locales is at [[Abridged Arena Array]].
Line 40:
** Unless the DM tells you no and hands you a randomly made character, yes this is a suggested way to play. Also a new six-pack cost a lot and adds new mutations (unless you pay more) making it only useful for Blue-class up.
* Tournament-level ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' usually gravitates towards the four or five best decks in the format at hand, each deck beating another good deck and being weak against another good deck in a sort of [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors]] form. Sometimes, a "rogue" deck can enter and completely wreck strategies (this is more likely to happen in low-level competitive Magic, though); usually, though, they're "rogue" decks for a reason (i.e. they're not good enough to hang with the best decks). However, the DCI is always vigilant about a format becoming ''too'' complacent (if the number of best decks whittles from four or five to two, with one of them more dominant; aka a "play this deck" or "play to beat this deck" scenario); when that happens, card bannings usually ensue.
* The GM is just as vulnerable to [[Complacent Gaming Syndrome]], and this can both kill game balance and fun. The GM may simply not know how to build a wide variety of encounters, may over-use his favorite monsters/clan/faction/powers while completely ignoring or even putting down his least favorites, may have too few personalities for the NPCs, may refuse to tailor the general thrust of his plots to the players' interests, may fail to take into account player experience when building encounters (either wiping out new players or leaving vets bored), may ignore the possibility for players to try diplomatic or sneaky solutions and just demand they fight his villain, or may just limit the scope of the setting to some corner of it he likes. This can occur in any game.
* The cost of buying new miniatures can mandate this in wargames, especially if "what you see is what you get" is in effect. Some players, however, will just insist on using their favorite side or always use the same builds even if they have the opportunity to do something new.
 
Line 78:
** You can also expect the ridiculously powerful Akuma, the ridiculously fast and strong Wesker, and the ridiculously funny Deadpool to frequent a large number of teams as well.
** There're quite a few Phoenixes in high level play.
** As well as a decent amount of Zero and Sentinel players. However, the number of Sentinel players ''did'' drop when a patch [[Nerf|nerfednerf]]ed his health (formerly the highest in the game at '''1.3 million'''; for reference, most of the other characters rank in somewhere between 1 mil and 850K) down to 910K.
* The ''[[Blaz Blue]]'' series has Ragna and Jin, the two main rival characters. They aren't particularly overpowered -- inoverpowered—in Calamity Trigger, Nu-13 is far superior to both of them, and in Continuum Shift the whole cast is pretty well balanced. Still, players go through the tutorial for the first time with Ragna, and they both have plenty of easily spammable moves with few drawbacks.
* ''[[Street Fighter X Tekken]]'' is not safe from this. Play online, and enjoy fighting some of these six characters again and again: Ryu, Ken, Kazuya, Jin, Rolento, Raven.
* ''UFC Undisputed 3'' purports to have over 40 different fighters, good luck trying to find a match which is not against the top 4: Jose Aldo, Georges St. Pierre, Jon 'Bones' Jones or Cain Velasquez.
Line 89:
* ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' eventually buckled to the competitive audience and added server options to disable absolutely ''every'' random factor in the game, including ones that are factored in to balancing weapons against their alternatives. Most servers with a large enough community will have these turned on.
** Additionally, every single update to the game gets the [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks]] treatment thanks to more variety in maps and weapons being added, causing a lot of grief for players who are tired of changing their play styles.
** The originally-informal, now-official [[Highlander]] game mode averts this a bit, because as we all know, [[There Can Only Be One]] of each class on every team, where players have to split their duties accordingly and work together efficiently. You know -- beknow—be a ''team'', like the game's ''title'' suggests. It was originally an out-of-game ruleset, but Valve eventually made it an official game mode in a patch.
** Eventually, when the game went free-to-play, the log-in interface was changed to feature a "Find Me a Game" option in addition to the traditional server list. Since the system was impartial to map, many veteran players joked the mechanic was installed to put new players on solid footing with experienced ones because "New or old, no one plays Turbine".
* For ''[[Dark Forces Saga|Star Wars: Jedi Knight]]: [[Colon Cancer|Jedi Outcast/Jedi Academy]]'', there's the no-Force, saber-only game setting. There's ranged weapons and Force powers<ref>Jump, and more rarely Speed, are occasionally allowed to make navigating a bit easier, but even then they'll be limited to the lowest level</ref> in the game? Apparently not, judging by the multiplayer community.
Line 138:
** This also happened in "Vanilla" World of Warcraft wherein most classes had one maybe two talent trees if they were lucky. That's because the other one or two was completely ''broken''. This was most prevalent in druids, who didn't really have Balance and Feral considered viable until ''Burning Crusade'' and ''Wrath''. It didn't help that they and warriors were the most gear-dependent classes in the game and the gear was mostly made for healing or tanking if they were warriors. As a result, feral and balance druids were scoffed at by guilds because there was no gear and they were needed to heal since a good 70% of people are DPS-classes anyways. This has ''thankfully'' gotten ''much'' better after Burning Crusade where specs were made more viable and gear made available for [[PvP]] classes, also to stop the issue of how DPS classes got their [[PvP]] Gear. (By running Blackwing Lair.) Not to mention, other trees were made more feasible too. While there are a few that are still [[Overshadowed by Awesome]] (Enhancement shamans late-game) it's nice to have a wider variety of classes available to fit certain roles.
** Likewise, this happens whenever an expansion pack is released: [[Play the Game Skip the Story|ignore all of the plot]], then go on the boards and complain that there's no content. Or deliberately underplay your usefulness so your class gets a buff in the next patch.
* [[Diablo]] 2's multiplayer was pretty much this: Log onto multiplayer. Pay people in-game loot to run you through the game, sitting by and absorbing all the experience so you can level up as fast as possible. You look up a stat sheet on the internet and follow it ''to the tee'', with no room for deviation (unless you want to be laughed at by all the [[Munchkin|Munchkins]]s, unless you're doing something like a "Crazy run") Then when you hit level 80, you run the final act again and again, get [[Sturgeon's Law|nothing but junk 98% of the time]] in hopes of finding that "perfect loot", until a player bribes you with something that ''isn't'' junk and you run them through the game.
* [[Warhammer Online]] has very vocal complaints about "bomb squads" - namely parties that guard and buff up a single (''long range'') DPS character who then solely runs through enemies spamming a short range area of effect ability that happened to have no cooldown or cast time. After 16 months of complaints about the inability to defend against it, suggestions to change the mechanics of the ability or noting that players were using a long range character to do more damage than a dedicated melée character, the game developers actually played some games and immediately issued a notification that they would nerf the mechanic in the upcoming patch. Although the mechanic has changed slightly, it is still feasible (and hated) and rumours persist of entire guilds who only accept one of the few classes who make this technique possible to avoid using any other tactics.
* This trope goes skipping hand-in-hand with elitism in [[Guild Wars]]. Don't have the skillsets or professions to match the popular cookie-cutter team builds everyone else is running? You do, but want to play your own way? Good luck finding a pick-up team for [[Bonus Dungeon|FoW]], [[Bonus Dungeon|UW]], [[Bonus Dungeon|Slavers]], or [[Bonus Dungeon|DoA]]. Your Lightbringer and Sunspear titles aren't maxxed out? Forget [[D.O.A.]] altogether unless you run your own guild. Lacking levels in other alliance titles will also get you viewed as a liability, depending on the attached skills, the mission, and the group build in question.
Line 145:
 
=== MOBA ===
* ''[[League of Legends]]'' has this in scores. However, the game is updated and tweaked so often its players are likely to have to change their preferences or find another game if they are displeased with changes as the developers do not hold back on the matter. While the specific strategies and characters change, common patterns that stick include players refusing to consider ever playing certain roles (jungling and support roles most commonly), certain characters (the "champions") getting jumps in popularity for a specific strategy with them being discovered, a currently dominant team-strategy that many players will use as a baseline with which to choose their champions... and just [[Flame War|FlameWars]] when anything or anyone gets [[Nerf|Nerfed]]ed or buffed, which is all the time.
 
=== Platformer ===
Line 158:
=== Real-Time Strategy ===
* The ''[[Supreme Commander]]'' equivalent is "Seton's Clutch" for 4v4 games and "Fields of Isis" for 2v2 games. Despite a large number of 3v3 maps to choose from, 3v3 games are always on Seton's Clutch again with 2 of the player positions left empty. A large proportion of the player base also insists on playing "20min no rush" (which is built into the game) and with nukes and heavy artillery disabled.
* In the old days, when playing ''[[Age of Empires]]'' online, any game that ''didn't'' start off in "Post-Imperial Age" (highest level of technology, every inch of the map known to every player, etc.) was doomed to languish in solitude until the game leader caved -- godcaved—god help you if you ''liked'' building a civilization.
** Try and play ''[[Age of Empires II]]'' without every enemy [[Zerg Rush|rushing your base with hundreds of paladins and trebuchets]].
* ''[[Command & Conquer: Red Alert]] 2: Yuri's Revenge''. Almost all 3v3 games were played on Tour of Egypt.
Line 222:
 
 
== [[Game Show|Game Shows]]s ==
* ''[[Match Game]]'' had a final round where contestants had to pick one celebrity to match their answers with in order to win the big prize money. Almost every episode that had Richard Dawson had him as the one contestants turned to in the final round, because he rarely mismatched his answers with contestants.
** In mid-1978 they introduced the "Star Wheel", which the contestant would spin to determine who they would attempt to match. The first person it landed on? ''[[Crowning Moment of Funny|Richard Dawson]]''. The panel performed a mock walk-out in disbelief -- '''''including Dawson'''''.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Complacent_Gaming_Syndrome"