History ComplacentGamingSyndrome / VideoGames

* The always-online 2015 ''VideoGame/NeedForSpeed'' game has a stat that tracks a player's favorite car, essentially the car used most often by the player. For much of the playerbase, this is either the Nissan GT-R or Lamborghini Aventador due to them having great top speeds and high horsepower coupled with the grippiness of an AWD car.

** In any given game there is a particular stage the community overwhelmingly agrees is the best to start on, usually because its boss is the easiest to beat with the buster and then you can follow the weakness order to plough through the rest. E.g. Toad Man in ''VideoGame/MegaMan4''.

* In any given ''VideoGame/MegaMan'' game there is a particular stage the community overwhelmingly agrees is the best to start on, usually because its boss is the easiest to beat and then you can follow the weakness order to plough through the rest. In other cases, it's because that boss's stage comes with an extra item that makes the actual platforming sections considerably easier. This is most prominent in the ''VideoGame/MegaManX'' series where each game has hidden capsules in stages that offer permanent upgrades.

* ''VideoGame/{{Cuphead}} provides a variety of powerups that can be equipped, but out of all of them, Smoke Bomb is by far the most frequently used among all but the most hardcore of players. It grants you complete invulnerability to attacks while dashing, which makes both stages and boss battles ''far'' easier as you can literally dash through enemies and attacks. Considering this game is NintendoHard as it is, anything that lowers the difficulty is very welcome. For those who don't use Smoke Bomb, Coffee (which causes your Super Meter to slowly automatically increase, on top of any Super you gain from attacking and parrying) is usually the replacement choice.
** Of all the Super attacks, Super II is probably the most used, as it grants complete invincibility for a short time. Many difficult bosses have attacks that can be completely trivialised using this Super, such as Beppi's rollercoaster or King Dice's cards.

* The whole ''genre'' has one. Step 1: Build a barracks or other equivalent building as quickly as possible. Step 2: Drop all your starting resources into said building and throw the resulting mass of men/robots/whatever at the enemy while they have no defense. This is called "Rushing" and practically every real time strategy game has it; part of the learning curve for this genre is that a player knows how to defend themselves from this, or their match will end in minutes.

** Want to use Chris, She-Hulk, or Iron Fist on your time? Better bring Spencer along. Spencer’s B assist, Wire Grapple (Slant Shot), is the only assist in the game that restands the opponent. The three aforementioned characters have their combo routes gutted (Iron Fist more so than Chris or She-Hulk) if their opponent isn’t standing, and Spencer is the ''only'' character who can allow them to get max damage.

** Prior to a patch that reduced the effectiveness of doing so, most online matches would include at least one player using The Bee shield and a multi-pellet weapon like the Conference Call shotgun. The reason for this being that amplify shields like The Bee add damage to your first shot if your shield is full at the cost of some of the shield energy. The Bee's amplify effect cost 0 shield energy, resulting in an extra 40-52k damage on ''every'' projectile you fire, which was added to ''each'' pellet or projectile. Did we mention The Bee would recharge in the blink of an eye? Sure, it has a quarter the capacity of most other shields it's own level, but who needs shields when you turn everything into a fine pink mist in a single shot?

** Since it's introduction in ''The Burning Crusade'', noone goes into a raid without inviting at least one player who can cast Bloodlust/Heroism or their equivalents. Likewise, warlocks and mages are frequently desired for the sheer amount of utility spells they bring besides dealing damage.

** When it comes to types of classes players use, the majority stick with DPS since it's generally easier to master and has less micromanaging when compared to the more difficult to use tank and healer classes. Because nearly every other player has DPS as their main class, the wait times for the duty finder if one is a DPS can be up to 30 minutes or even longer since there's less players performing as a tank or healer. Additionally, within the DPS role itself for 2.0, you're more likely to see Bards and Black Mages than the others. The melee jobs require the player to not only keep shifting with the movements of an enemy, but also they have to shift to the target's flanks and rear to trigger their weaponskill combos (approx. every 20 seconds for Dragoons, and 10 seconds for Monk). Summoner require managing a pet, and upkeeping upwards of 5 Debuffs (Bio I & II, Miasma I & II, and Shadow Flare) plus several other long duration cool down abilities. Bards on the other hand, have no combo positioning to worry about, and just simply keep firing with nearly zero down time beyond needing to let their stamina recover (which it can easily by cross-classing the Lancer class' Invigorate, and by using it's own Army's Paeon), and a well geared Blackmage can pump out 600 to 1000+ Burst damage every few seconds, by simply casting Thunder III, Fire I, and Blizzard III, with occasional free casts thanks to their passive traits of Fire III and more Thunder III (which applies the full sum of the Damage over time effect of a normal Thunder III cast, AND applies the Damage over time Debuff). Or using Flare when they're about to run out of MP while on Astral Fire stance. Later patches would rebalance all classes in one way or another, so preferences shifted with them.

** The Citroen Survolt, a starter Class B car in the game, is a popular car in multiplayer due to the car's fast acceleration (rated at 3 seconds when the car is newly purchased), coupled with it's low price (since it is a starter Class B car, after all).

** Dracovish from ''Sword and Shield'', or more specifically, it's SignatureMove, Fishious Rend. It has fairly high base power of 85 to start with, which then doubles if the user goes first. It's also considered a biting move, and Dracovish can have the ability Strong Jaw, which boosts the power of biting moves by 50%. Add in STAB for another 50% boost, a Choice Band for ''another'' 50% boost, and rain for ''yet another'' 50% boost, and your abomination of science will be able to one-shot pretty much anything that isn't outright immune to Water-type attacks. Which meant players were ''forced'' to run such {{mon}}s on their team to prevent Dracovish from effortlessly sweeping their entire team by itself. This was so overcentralizing that Website/{{Smogon}} eventually banned Dracovish. Something similar happened with Galarian Darmanitan, who could deal 50% more damage (coming off a monstrously high Attack stat) but could only use the first move chosen for it (the same effect as the Choice Band, which stacked with it), such that Smogon also banned Galarian Darmanitan. Averted in the official games' Ranked battles, which are 3v3 single battles and 4v4 double battles, where Dracovish and Galarian Darmanian both eventually dropped out of the top 10 most-used Pokémon, all on their own.

* ''VideoGame/{{Synergism}}'': Most players respect their talismans to give effects to the Duplication, Thrift, and Superior Intellect Runes (a setup known as 2/4/5) as they can increase the amount of Coins earned significantly and make beating Challenge 10 quite a bit easier.

** During the first year or so of the game, you typically wanted two supports (almost always Ana for her amazing solo heals and Lucio for his speed and healing boosts on top of both having spectacular ultimates for their team), two to three tanks (Zarya being a must here with the others being either Reinhardt or D.Va or both), and filling the remaining team slots with dps, Reaper being the go-to pick for that class due to his spectacular close range damage. Blizzard has tried to mitigate these problems with nerfs to Zarya's shields and Ana's ultimate, but the meta is still heavily reliant on tanks at the moment for numerous reasons leaving many doubtful as to Blizzard's balancing ability especially since in the same update where they nerfed Zaryas's shields they gave D.Va a heavy buff. As it is expect your team to express audible dissapointment in your choices if they don't apply to this setup, and lord help you if you pick one of the admittedly low-tier defense heroes.

* ''VideoGame/{{Synergism}}'': Most players respec their talismans to give effects to the Duplication, Thrift, and Superior Intellect Runes (a setup known as 2/4/5) as they can increase the amount of Coins earned significantly and make beating Challenge 10 quite a bit easier.

* VideoGame/''{{Omori}}'':

* VideoGame/{{Omori}}:

** Omori has many Skills that debuff an enemy with a certain emotion, but out of all of them, you'd be hard pressed to find any player who uses anything other than Mock. It's the first one he obtains, and it's also the most useful, as it harshly debuffs an Angry enemy's Attack stat. For those who aren't aware, Angry increases Attack at the expense of reducing Defense. An Attack debuff turns Angry into an emotion with nothing but downsides. Even better, Kel is usually the fastest party member with Omori being the second fastest, meaning it's very easy to chain an Annoy from Kel into a Mock from Omori, which Aubrey can follow up by using Team Spirit to give her and another party member (usually Omori, who tends to be the main damage dealer most of the time) the Happy status, causing their attacks to do extra damage against Angry targets.

** As series tradition, Ken was by ''far'' the most used character online, especially in early seasons with his massive burst damage. Even with more characters added in throughout the game's life, Ken is ''very'' common sight online.

** ''Videogame/PokemonLegendsArceus'' has this for the Fire type starters in game. While Hisui has far more fire types to choose from with than base Sinnoh, Cyndaquil and Chimchar are still far easier to get, useful far quicker and longer than the other choices, and their evolved typings and movepools render both incredibly useful throughout the game.

* Most [[LetsPlay Let's Players] playing games with character customization will unlock options and then forget about them immediately. If there are powerful but difficult techniques, they'll try them once or twice and then never again. Instead, these players almost always default to repeated use of the earliest abilities, unless a game requires advanced or unlockable abilities to progress on a regular basis.

** [[First game's VideoGame/RatchetAndClank2002]] Blaster is in similar position. It's first truly long-range weapon you can get and obtainable on second planet, has some degree of auto-tracking and fires fast. This game's enemies HP scales only very slowly, so it'll stay relevant for the rest of game and it's one of few weapons useful against FinalBoss. Even after getting this game's rocket launcher, Devastator, the Blaster will get more use overall because its ammo is dirt cheap and the game's economy is rather tough. Consequently, most players will use Devastator for enemies the Blaster can't help you with. It also helps that you can get an upgrade for it during first playthrough, [[GuideDangIt if you know where to look]].

* In the ''Franchise/RatchetAndClank'' games, while there are [[{{Tagline}} over 30 weapons and gadgets not fit for this world]], most players will always have the game's rocket launcher in their weapon rotation. While other weapons may be fancier and deal more damage if fired right, [[BoringButPractical the rocket launcher is fast, simple, can be fired rapidly and deals a lot of damage]], helping it remain viable even once it's been fully upgraded. [[DevelopersForesight This is probably why they take a lot of XP to upgrade in the first place]].

** Few are the players who tackle the BonusBoss of ''VideoGame/Persona4'', or most of the endgame for that matter, without the combo of Yoshitsune + Power Charge + Hassou Tobi. The only variation comes in how many buffs you use beforehand. Persona 5 also has Yoshitsune available to the player, and he's just as overpowered and common as a way to defeat the BonusBoss, although since one of the component Personas is the Ultimate Persona for the Magician Arcana (which maxes out on the evening of December 23), he can't be fused until the VeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon of the original game.
*** Yoshitsune on the other hand does not exist in any of the three versions of Persona 3, perhaps for the better as that game's BonusBoss will kill you instantly if you void their attacks. In this case, the meta for this is mainly to use the Persona added in the UpdatedRerelease, [[spoiler:Orpheus Telos]], who is only available for completing every social link in that game. Given that this Persona is strong against, but not immune to, every normal type of damage it can be assumed that this was the intended use of them.

* ''VideoGame/OctopathTraveler'':
** Most of the time, the party will be comprised of Cyrus (the best magic user), Olberic/H'aanit (tied for the best physical fighters), and Alfyn (whose Concoct skill makes him a very versatile healer). The fourth slot is going to be Therion (a reliable physical attacker who can also supply SP to allies), Ophilia (a great healer whose ultimate can double up an ally's skills for several turns), or the character whose quest you're currently on, since a character is a RequiredPartyMember for their own tale.
** It gets partly subverted once you get to the BonusBoss, who forces you to split your 8-person entourage into two teams of four to take out two separate phases of the battle. Even then, you will want Patience (25% chance to take two turns in a round of combat) and Hang Tough (prevents being one-shot by attacks received when not near death) on all of your characters, and Surpassing Power (raises damage cap per hit to 99,999 instead of 9,999) on anyone you want to deal decent amounts of damage.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' had the BonusBoss Vercingetorix vulnerable to poison. Due to his sky high stats, the target time for him was 20min for an endgame party. Cue everyone facing him with Vanille/Fang/Snow, poisoning him and spamming Mediguard until it needs re-poisoning or it dies.

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

* ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty 2'' has Toujane, Tunisia. Also notable that [[GameBreaker almost everyone used bolt-action rifles and nothing else because of how much better they were]] - one shot nearly anywhere on the body was a guaranteed kill, while even the semi-auto rifles [[ArbitraryGunPower firing the exact same rounds]] were bee stings in comparison.

* Most endgame parties in ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' will be Crono, Ayla, and Frog. Sometimes replacing Crono for Magus. In the SNES&PS1 versions, Marle and Robo were [[TierInducedScrappy tier induced scrappies]], though this [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap changed in the DS and PC versions]]. Frog and Ayla are forced into the party during a lot of the mid-game, Crono cannot be removed until fairly late in the game anyway, and Magus is an EleventhHourRanger who needs to be trained before he'll be caught up in terms of abilities. Thus? Most people go for Crono, Frog, and Ayla.

** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar'' is especially prone to this. Despite the fact that there are literally thousands of possible pairing combinations, most of which are at least decent, for a while, 99% of StopHavingFunGuys use [[BodyguardCrush Edain/Midir]], [[SlapSlapKiss Ayra/Lex]], Lachesis/[[KnightInShiningArmor Finn]] or [[KnightInSourArmor Beowulf]] (likely [[ReallyGetsAround both]]), [[TierInducedScrappy Silvia/No-one]], [[CrackPairing Fury/Claude]], [[ThirdOptionLoveInterest Tailtiu]]/[[DiskOneNuke Lewyn]] and [[CrackPairing Briget/Holyn.]] This was loosened over time, with other pairings being more commonly considered (pairing Silvia started being seen as actually good), and general consensus leaning towards the ''actual'' best units of the second generation being those with fixed parentage, letting you do whatever you want with the other kids.

** Especially in Versus mode, people seem only use Uzis and Auto Shotguns while the Assault Rifle falls down the middle. Using a Pump Shotgun or especially the Hunting Rifle will get you [[StopHavingFunGuys scolded by many people who only care about winning]] - until you start [[BoomHeadshot sniping smokers and hunters waiting on buildings in the face.]] And trying to jump on you. And boomers trying to fall on you. Then they complain about how much it sucks to get killed before they can get anywhere near you. The Hunting Rifle has also become more accepted in Versus since the release of The Sacrifice DLC, where it was modified to match its accuracy in the sequel. Similarly in the sequel, the most used weapons are either Auto Shotguns or AK-47s with a laser slight (if one can find them), simply because of how powerful they are.