Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Difference between revisions
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== Tabletop Games ==
* In [[Tabletop Games]], most gamers tend to have a favorite race/class combination that they stick to. One example is that even though the 3rd and later editions of ''[[Dungeons
** Furthermore, in ''3.5'' and earlier, many people (beginners especially) will demand to re-roll their character if there is even a hint of it being best suited to be a primary spellcaster. Who wants to read another two chapters of 8-point text just to be able to make a simple attack? Give me a Barbarian called Gnar or Blarg anyday.
** The fourth edition has released two books containing literally hundreds of magical items each; if the game's forums are any judge, only a handful of those items are actually "worth" playing with: a handful of those items are generally useful for a range of characters, a substantial amount of them are useful only to certain specific builds, and a disappointingly high number are nearly useless.
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** In ''[[Maid RPG]]'', everything is randomly generated, but only the stats have an in-game effect, and you can wind up with something [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|ludicrous and fun]]. The amount of randomness in ''[[Maid RPG]]'' is such that you can have an albino with brown skin, or someone with both elf ears and cat ears. Of course, the sourcebook for ''[[Maid RPG]]'' also states that if you want, you can just choose character attributes.
* ''[[Munchkin (game)|Munchkin]]'' hangs a lampshade on this - when you die, you keep your race, class and level, but you lose all your items (only because the other players stole them).
* ''[[Exalted]]'' has [[Fan Nickname|Paranoia Combat.]] Sure, PC's have amazingly powerful and fun tricks to deal massive damage, but most artifact weapons have a reasonable expectation <ref>Somewhat, anyway. Damage is highly randomized in ''Exalted'', so it is entirely possible and not terribly unlikely to have a really powerful attack do barely any damage at all</ref> of being able to kill any character in a hit or two if they hit. This, of course, completely ignores the phenomenal cosmic powers of an elder Exalt, or the reality-warping powers of the Yozis. However, nearly any Exalt type has access to [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Perfect Defenses]], usually cheaply and without requiring a great deal of investment on behalf of the character. As a result, [[Boring but Practical|it's far more efficient to use normal attacks on a character and force him to perfectly defend,]] while he does the same. Some people dislike this as rendering most of the combat powers of the Exalted [[Awesome but Impractical|needlessly flashy]], others because it leads to long, drawn out slogfests while characters stunt back motes and try to break even, and then some people just adjust [[Cast
* [[Paranoia]], being a system in which death is frequent and expected, embraces an institutionalized form of this. Player characters come in six-packs of clones, and if you run out, you can buy another six-pack. Don't make a new character, just increment the number at the end of your name and keep playing.
** 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.
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** 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]]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 ''[[
* ''[[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.
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** Alterac Valley suffers from a similar case, turning into a rush to kill the opposing general as soon as possible. The fact that this got much harder in a recent patch didn't deter players from this procedure much.
** 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]]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.
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** Red Alert 3 players tend to pick a side (Allies, Soviets, or Japanese) and completely forget about the other two. Even worse, players will then develop a strategy that works well for them and stick to it (Allie air-power, Soviet armor, Japanese mobility) and fail to remember their other possible strategies (Allies stealth/sabotage, Soviet glass cannon/zerg rush, Japanese heavy bombardment [should be noted that their Wave Force Artillery and Shogun Battleship are two of the best because they don't yell "I'm over here" like the Athena Cannon and Aircraft Carrier or give the enemy a chance to run like the V4 rocket-launcher and Dreadnaught.])
** For that matter, the older ''Tiberian Sun'': Custom-made maps with large walls and completely flat ground, teams build bases behind the wall. No air or underground units until you pass the "gate" (the entrance in the large wall). Et cetera. Jeez.
* The vast majority of casual [[
* [[Star Craft 2]] has a few, the most blatant is any 1v1 game between two Terran players. Expect only Marines, Siege tanks, Vikings and Medievacs. That is unless one of them knows how to use IEchoic's 2Fac2Port build which is specifically tailored to take the standard TvT build by the balls and make it that player's bitch. Protoss vs Terran has similar issues, as the Protoss player will always go Robotics Facility for Colossi and lots of Stalkers to deal with Terran bio-balls comprised of Marines and Marauders with escorting Vikings to counter the Colossi and allow the Marines to wipe out the Immortals. Zerg vs Zerg matches are usually decided by who can get a fast spawning pool and still maintain enough of an economy to outproduce the other in terms of zerglings. Innovative players have created builds that have broken the monotony of these scenarios but trying to use them outside of a tournament or higher league play will result in being harassed for cheating, or even being formally reported to Blizzard simply because most middle-to-bottom tier players, once happy with a build for any kind of match up, will tell you that not even God himself can play the game any other way.
** The major issue with the second game is the presence of far more 'hard' counters (units and tactics which can decisively shut down certain aspects of play unless massively outnumbered or behind on upgrades) than in the original game allowing the outcomes of matches to be set in stone rather early unless both sides scout well. This results in a more methodical and technical [[Metagame]] with a heavy emphasis on timing and memorization.
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** In addition, players had the option of either giving or receiving clues for the Winner's Circle. Most of them opted to receive, mainly because that was the predominant convention at the time (in ''[[Password]]'', for example, the celebrity always gave clues in whatever bonus round they played), and the round was difficult enough without putting someone who's much more comfortable in the giver's chair in the receiving position.
* Sometimes present in the Art Fleming era of ''[[Jeopardy!]]'', which paid full winnings to all contestants, winning or losing. Some contestants would intentionally stop ringing in if they felt that they had earned enough money, or if another contestant picked up a significant lead. The Trebek era gave this an [[Obvious Rule Patch]] by offering the full winnings only to the winner, to create more of an incentive to compete. The losing contestants initially got parting gifts, but starting in the early 2000s, second and third place respectively won a flat $2,000 and $1,000.
* During the trivia sections on ''[[Double Dare (1986 TV Show)||Double Dare]]'', a team could "Dare" and pass the question onto their opponents if stumped, though that team could "Double Dare" and pass it back, earning the other team twice the cash if they answered it correctly. However, they could go for the "Physical Challenge", where they would play a game to earn the cash. Only one family managed to exploit the Double Dare strategy.
* In ''[[High Rollers]]'', it was ''very'' rare to see a contestant roll the dice if there was so much as a 25% chance of rolling a bad number. Even if there were tens of thousands of dollars in prizes available on the board, players immediately started passing the dice to their opponent as soon as there was a semi-decent chance that they could roll a bad number and hence lose the game.
* This was lampshaded after a 2010 [[Retool]] of [[Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?]]. The whole show was predictable, and the hot seat just wasn't scary anymore. Two of the lifelines have been replaced with the opportunity to skip the question at hand, and the first ten categories and dollar amounts are random. That's not even all of the changes.
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