Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Difference between revisions

== Video Games ==

 

* By default, every single sports game aspiring to be realistic and featuring a large number of playable teams/athletes will suffer from this. [[Justified Trope|Justified]], too, since it reflects [[Real Life]]. Unless the player has an attachment to a team of lesser-than-God tier, or is [[Cherry Tapping]], or the selection is made at random, inevitably only a select number of elites you can count on one hand will be played most of the times.

** Can be fixed through the use of tiers (like many other games). Sports games, unlike many other games which strive for balance, will usually have a fairly easy way of tiering via in-game ratings of teams (either out of 100 or out of 5 stars or whatever). Only problem of course is there still is no TRUE balance, since usually one team will still be slightly better.

* As illustrated above, around 50% of all ''[[Street Fighter IV]]'' players use [[Shotoclone|Ken]] and 40% use Sagat. This has earned the game the nickname "Ken Fighter IV: Sagat Strike". This has been mocked [http://www.halolz.com/2009/03/10/street-fighter-iv-online-fighting-edition/ numerous] [http://i40.tinypic.com/ih1j4z.jpg times].

** Even ''worse'' in ''[[Street Fighter III]]'' which only carried over Ryu and Ken from the previous games. 75% of all ''Street Fighter III'' players used Ken (Shinryuken super, natch), 20% used Ryu, and 5% used someone else. It got a little better in ''Second Impact'' and ''Third Strike'' once players realized the new characters had a lot of potential.

* ''[[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.

* In the ''[[Super Smash Bros]].'' games, the community analyses the hell out of every character, game mode, stage and glitch, developing the fabled 'tier lists' for each game to show which character is considered the 'best'. Thus with each new tier list, expect at least 50% of your opponents to play one of the top 3 in the tier list (Meta Knight in ''Brawl'', anyone)?

** Stock seems to be the go-to game mode. No one even considers Coin Mode, everybody assumes you accidentally forgot to change the default with Time Mode and in ''Brawl'' Bonus Mode was simply removed from the game.

** Players also tend to have an irrational fear of items (lampooned when the official site sneaked in the message that "Real men use items!"), leading to the [[Memetic Mutation]] "NO ITEMS! [[Player Preferred Pattern|FOX ONLY!]] [[Abridged Arena Array|FINAL DESTINATION!]]" If you're lucky, you'll have a friend who occasionally likes to mix things up (99 stock super sudden death with high items). Mostly its complacency in the above pattern, rarely its someone who refuses to not play by personal rules.

* ''[[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.

** When Left 4 Dead got released, you even got kicked out of the game for not picking the Auto-Shotgun in Versus. That has thankfully changed since and the other weapons are also more commonly taken now. In the sequel, it was similar with secondaries - you were called a Noob for using dual pistols.

 

* In ''[[Chrome Hounds]]'', you'll find there's always player matches at South Cemo Oil Fields (and hardly anywhere else), [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|everyone uses funky stick mechs,]] and may [[Scrub|god have mercy on your soul if you use Heavy Gunning to drop a base.]]

* ''[[Starsiege]]'' is all about this trope these days, stubborn little game that it is for still being around. There are about half a dozen "standard" vehicle configurations that have been in use for about the last ten years and deviations are pretty uncommon. What's popular is popular for good reason, but some otherwise very skilled players have been known to [[Rage Quit]] when the status quo is challenged enough to render their favorite ride ineffective. These setups and the tactics they are built for have simply been standard issue for so long that many of those who still play haven't bothered to keep up the skills to deal with anything outside the norm.

 

* While ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' battlegrounds provide more variety than usual, there is only one tactic used for each. Even if it sucks. Case in point: Warsong Gulch. Both sides run to the opposing flag (usually completely ignoring each other), take it, run back and either clash in the middle (often with both flags getting returned) or both flags end up in the opposing fortress, heavily defended for most of the battle. There is a good reason a 25 minute time limit was added to this battleground.

** 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.

* ''[[Phantasy Star Online]]'' players tend to gravitate towards the [[Boss Rush]] quest "Towards the Future", since it's the fastest way to [[Level Grinding|Level Grind]]. You will rarely find anyone playing anything else.

 

* ''[[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]] or buffed, which is all the time.

 

* ''[[Castlevania]]: [[Harmony of Despair]]'' has a lot of players choosing to play as [[Chronicles of Sorrow|Soma Cruz]] due to his ability to [[Game Breaker|tear the game to shreds]] with certain souls and weapons.

 

* Expect to see a lot of Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions in ''[[Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune]]'', especially the eighth and ninth iteration. Mazda RX-8 is also quite common.

* ''[[Mario Kart]] Wii'': Certain players will only play as Funky Kong + Flame Runner because is the best combination statistically. Pretty everyone else plays as their Miis.

* ''[[Initial D Arcade Stage]] Ver. 2'': Honda Integra DC2 on Irohazaka was basically the only combination anybody ever played in multiplayer.

 

* 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 -- god help you if you ''liked'' building a civilization.

** 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.

 

* Don't play ''[[Audition Online]]'' unless you know how to do 3-6key chance and enjoy high BPM songs. Basically the usually symptoms of Rhythm games you should be familiar with. It is basically useless to find players who are willing to do a no-chance game. and since chance adds a point multiplier, expect to lose, A LOT.

* ''[[DJMAX]] Technika 2'''s Crew Race mode. In Crew Race, you create a course consisting of 3 songs, each with your best score on it, and people who challenge your course must complete it and optionally beat your combined scores for the 3 songs. As soon as it was fully implemented, it became every noob's [[Nintendo Hard|worst]] [[Nightmare Fuel|nightmare]] come true: The majority of courses so far have [[That One Boss|high-end difficulty songs]] like Fermion (Hard), D2 (Hard), and Son of Sun (Maximum).

* If you just like to play the [[Guitar Hero]] or [[Rock Band]] games for fun, stay the hell away from the public Xbox Live matchups. 50% of the time you'll be forced into playing the hardest song on that particular disc, and if so help you god you pick any other song when it's your turn to choose, prepare to hear a lot of groans and insults from the other players. Ditto if everyone else has a particular DLC song (usually balls-hard as well) and you don't. And ditto if you play on anything but Expert, and ditto if you play Expert but suck at it, and so on...

 

* Justified in "Champions of Krynn" where you ''have'' to choose at least one Knight of Solamnia in your party if you want to be able to finish the game.

* ''[[Ivalice Alliance]]'' games tend to toy with this:

* The first [[Disgaea Hour of Darkness|first ''Disgaea'' game]], due to the theory behind it being thoroughly mapped by the nerdy playerbase. Any player who is grinding to take on the [[Bonus Boss]] knows that there is one true strategy: make a Divine Majin and [[Level Grinding|Level Grind]] the "Beauty of Evil" stage for literally hours on end, simply because there is no quicker way to gain levels.

 

* Oddly enough, the language barrier is not a major issue for Americans (and others that don't know Japanese) playing the ''[[Galaxy Angel (video game)|Galaxy Angel]]'' games. This is because the first option in a given dialogue almost always raises at least one of the girl's affection level, which makes them better in combat. The only times you don't choose option 1 is when you know ahead of time it will actually decrease the affection level of the girl you're after. Some of the levels, on the other hand, can be headache-inducing, moreso if you've been mean to the girls (which makes them worse in combat).

 

* Did you know that ''[[Star Wars Battlefront]] II'' has a [[Capture the Flag]] mode? Probably not, because it almost never appears on most servers and the few ones that feature it usually have a rule of "no CTF", meaning that players don't capture flags and just kill each other the whole match until the time limit runs out or the server admin feels like changing the map. They do this because CTF has two advantages: no total kill limit and you cannot capture command posts (which are used as spawn points, and are not very fun to have captured by the other team.) Some other servers don't use CTF but instead have a "no CP" (CP = command posts) rule for the normal game mode.

** For that matter, there's Assault mode in Mos Eisley, which pits every hero in the game against one another, Republic/Rebel versus Separatist/Imperial. It's nearly impossible to find a server above 25% its maximum player count that isn't in this setting. The Xbox version of the game doesn't help, considering its [[Downloadable Content]] almost solely consisted of adding the mode to even more maps.

* ''[[Red Faction]] Guerrilla'' has this to some extent. Quite a few games are exclusively [[Game Breaker|enforcer (a slightly nerfed assault rifle with homing bullets]] or rocket-whoring contests (making certain maps with unequal power-weapon distribution hideously broken), often revolving on how many people on your team have jetpacks, heal packs or firepower packs. However, it averts this trope more often than not by only giving players a choice of two maps at a time and providing lots of clever counters to everything.

 

* ''[[Combat Mission]]'' has King Tiger v. Super Pershing battles.

 

* For full credit in [[Scribblenauts]], the player must complete each level three times with three sets of mutually exclusive items. However, this can be bypassed by entering a nonsense word plus the thing you want (eg "gxdfl jetpack").

 

* ''[[Minecraft]]'' is game where you can literally do anything you want in the world and build anything you want. However, most players, when they start to build a home, they tend to make a basic square house with one or two floors since it's simple and suits the basic needs such as having a place to sleep, store items, smelt stuff, and craft new items. Other players will make more elaborate homes with more complex mechanisms, such as using pistons to make hidden doors or using certain blocks and items to make a makeshift chair, though these methods are more for show than for practicality.

** Iron tools and iron armor will be the most common items used by the majority of the players since iron based items last quite a while and iron swords are pretty strong. Diamond items are better in durability and power, [[Too Awesome to Use|but their rarity and the high probability of losing your items in lava make diamond items more of a trophy than a tool]]. Leather armor and golden tools and armor are too weak to be of any use as well. Since iron is quite common in caves, players will be using iron for everything.