Ye gods! Look at all those options!

How much time do you spend in the Options/Setting menu of a game? What do you change on them and why?

I spend a lot of time in the options menu in the first time when i wanna make the game run smooth, and sometimes i just change stuff like hotkeys or volume. Also PC games have more options than console games, what do you think of that?

When it comes to options on a PC game I have a ... I don't know if you'd call it a guilty pleasure? But, I've become so accustom to my hotkeys in League of Legends that I often relate my hotkeys to other games that have skill-bars as well.

For example, My Abilities in LoL are mapped out. A - S - D - F - G - H

A = Ability 1
B = Ability 2
C = Ability 3
D = Ultimate
G = Summoner Spell 1
H = Summoner Spell 2

With the above in mind, I try to do the same thing in other games. Like, I just picked up Runescape again and, while the schematics of the game don't allow a perfect mirror of my LoL keys, I've basically emulated the same thing in a different way.

ASDFGH is to League of Legends as 123456 is to Runescape.

They're virtually identical and only differ in their positions on the keyboard itself.

So yeah, that's the PC spectrum of options.

In console games, however, I like to mess with anything they allow. I usually keep the difficulty on Normal, unless I feel confident to strap on my junk and play on Hard. I also like a game to be really bright. So, with that said, I obviously fiddle with the brightness. On FPS', I like unrestricted gameplay, so if there is graphic content filter, I'll automatically flick it to unfilter. Uh. If the game provides it, look sensitivity.

In RPGs I usually don't touch too much, maybe the controls and screen designs if I feel they're really gaudy.

Fighting games, I have to bind the controls on my Arcade Stick to be identical to any other fighting game setup I use with it.

That's about it really. :)

In some games, if they allow me, i bind some hotkeys i use a lot to my Mouse 4 and Mouse 5 key (got a gaming mouse with 5 keys ^^).

Like in Borderlands, i have grenades attached to Mouse 5 and my skill to 4, which makes it easier for me to play the game and i only need the keyboard to sprint, move and interact.

When I first get a game I always go and change the settings to what I want. I tend to like the default control of games, but will change them if I see fit. On PC I also turn all of the graphics up. The main thing I do with any game is change the volume settings. Video games usually have all of the volumes sliders set at the same by default, but I don't like playing that way. This is generally what I do:

Voiceover: 100%
In my opinion you should always be able to hear voices in a game better than everything else. Sound effects and music add to the experience, but you won't know what's going on unless you can hear what everyone is saying.

Sound Effects: 75%
These alert you to certain things and adds to the realism of the game. I want to able to hear what's happening in the game world, but still be able to hear NPC's over them.

Music: 50%
Music adds to the atmosphere a lot. If it's a nice game, there will be easy going music. Action, there will be intense music. Horror, there will be scary music. This really makes gameplay a lot more fun and you might not even realize it. Although I enjoy music in a game, I like to hear it the least. If video game characters were real there wouldn't be music playing for them in the background on their adventures. I like to feel like I'm part of the game so I need to hear what's going on in within the game more than the music. The music adds to the excitement and can give you certain cues based on the tone, but I want it to be at a normal volume. I don't want to feel like my game character is running through a concert the whole time.