Default Setting Syndrome: Difference between revisions

A number of arcade games will provide a variety of stages, characters, and other settings to select. For most newcomers, none of this matters, because they'll just go for the default settings. These are the settings you'll always, ''always'' see whenever someone at the arcade tries a game that they're new to, and in bigger cases of this trope, merely picking something other than the defaults is a sign of experience with the game.

 

 

[[Rhythm Game|Rhythm Games]] are a pretty special case. This trope can make the default song into a [[Hype Backlash|scorned]] [[Ear Worm]], with some people [[Fan Hater|developing the urge to brutally murder any more players who play that song]].

== [[Driving Game|Driving Games]] ==

* The Beginner tracks of ''[[Daytona USA]]'' and ''Daytona USA 2''. Justified in that the other courses tend to be <s>Nintendo</s> [[Nintendo Hard|Sega Hard]].

* In a peculiar example, the [[Need for Speed]] Underground games actually gave benefit to players who stayed default... well, sort of. The second game in particular encouraged you to find and buy new cars often, because the new cars' ''base'' stats were higher than the base stats of the starter cars. The newer unlocked cars also looked a lot nicer than the mundane, boxy starter cars. Players smart enough to experiment, however, would realize to NOT switch cars as the game wanted you to- [[Magikarp Power|the two best cars in the game (when fully upgraded) were both starter cars]], of which, the BEST car in the game was also the ugliest and had the worst starter stats. In this way, if you did the default (that is to say, change cars) of what the GAME wanted you to do, you'd end up with a worse car than if you stuck with the default you started with.

 

 

== [[Shoot Em Ups]] ==

{{quote| "Don't pick slow ship! [[Awesome but Impractical|Just because it has wide shot doesn't mean it's gonna save your ass!]] [[Mighty Glacier|You're gonna have to move, too.]]"}}

* The normal, blue version of the RVR-01 Gauntlet in ''[[Thunder Force]] V''; the other versions have to be selected with a code involving the player 2 controller, which makes them [[Guide Dang It|relatively unknown]] to most players.

* In Fallen Empire: Legions people new to the game and Guests almost always use the Sentinel because they haven't figured out that you can change characters. It makes it even worse that it takes time and practice to actually master the Sentinel. Poor buggers.

* In Star Trek: Star Fleet Command, everyone plays as either Federation or Klingon. Sometimes Romulans, maybe Gorn. Hardly anyone as Hydran, Lyran, or ISC. Probably because the latter three aren't canonical to Star Trek. And does anyone really care about the Orion Pirate cartels? As for the Mirak, how many Trekkies remember missile salvos being used in Star Trek.

** Only arguably an example of this trope. MEII changed how powers work in a way that dramatically altered the balance towards using firearms instead. Basically, any enemy dangerous enough to bother using a power on is immune to most biotic or tech powers until they're already at least half dead from gunfire; on higher difficulty levels it's more like 3/4s for the meaningful ones and even the chaff take 1/2. This obviously favors Soldiers, since they're the class built from the ground up to shoot things.

*** It also helps that Soldiers are the only playable class who have access to assault rifles from the very beginning and that assault rifles are often the best tactical choice for their balance in terms of ammo capacity, rate of fire, and accuracy.

=== Non-video game examples: ===

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* Go to [http://memegenerator.net memegenerator]. Choose any "character" that has multiple templates. Observe that virtually all captioned images are the first in the non-cycling series.