Starmen.Net

Since it’s Intergalactic Shmuppreciation Month , I may as well start a topic that relates to it as well as an overall gaming skill in general.

Ah, button mashing… Even since the early days of Space Invaders where only a whopping ONE bullet was allowed to be on-screen at a time, people have been hitting buttons as fast as their fingers would let them. With the debut of the 2D fighting game, button mashing went from a test of arm endurance and physical skill to the cheapest technique of gameplay in the book.

Personally, I still love to button mash. Heck, I still love playing games like Track and Field on the NES, that one minigame in Alien Hominid HD where you have to keep mashing 2 buttons to eat the food faster than the computers/other players, and any game that involves torturing one’s digits just to see something really fast happening on the screen. I’m simple like that ^_ Recent button mashing has turned into its own art style; you can do it the standard (but inefficient) way with your thumb, flex your arm with your fingers in a snapping position and using the side of your middle finger, or even using a pen/your thumb wrapped in a t-shirt or some cloth and rubbing the buttons back and forth! On the subject of Street Fighter, I do fall in the category of the pathetic button mashing noob. The only character I can actually perform specials with is Ryu and everyone and their grandma knows how to throw a Hadoken in their sleep in this day and age.

For those freaks like me who enjoy button mashing to such a disturbing extent, there’s actually a device that measures how fast you can hit one or 2 buttons per second. It’s called the Hudson Shooting Watch and it’s really good for getting your presses per second up! I’ve used it for about a month and a half and I’ve got from around 9-10 presses/second to 11-12 when I’m doing well. You can try an online version here as long as your have a numpad, but I’ve found it to be harder to play with than the Shooting Watch.

To get a general idea of how insanely fast people can go, Takahashi Meijin, the man who popularized the Shooting Watch, could go at an astounding rate of 16 presses/second with only one button! Personally, my record’s 12.2 per second with a single button and I’ve been training my mashing hand for a while now!

Nothing quite like eating the controller only to discover the super secret combo hardcore gamers have been spending their lives trying to master.

It’s like finding the cure for cancer and using it as body soap.

I swear to god the final level of Resident Evil 5 is IMPOSSIBLE if you’re playing as Sheva. Basically you fall of a ledge and you have to literally press a button like 100 times in like a minute to climb back up.

UltiMario1337:

I swear to god the final level of Resident Evil 5 is IMPOSSIBLE if you’re playing as Sheva. Basically you fall of a ledge and you have to literally press a button like 100 times in like a minute to climb back up.

They should let you do pullups to strengthen her climbing.

DrHeavyDDR:

That’s like saying a professional fencer should be able to beat a man with a gun.

No it’s not. Quite the opposite, in fact. Most modern fighters that I know of discourage button mashing, and have systems set up so that those who really know how to play the game have huge advantages over mashers.

(Depending on the game) The button masher has a huge advantage though. While he gives up stability and can get tripped up in his own mess, he’s unpredictable, which makes countering (Not literal in-game countering) difficult. A pro is, in nature, able to see another player’s style and fight them accordingly. Which is impossible to do with a guy with no style, since his moves are literally off the wall.

Weird example, but for those who watch One Piece, it’s like Luffy fighting Enel, when Luffy countered his “mantra” ability by bouncing his attacks randomly off the wall, so Enel was completely unable to predict the attacks. /lonelynerdarguing

DrHeavyDDR:

(Depending on the game) The button masher has a huge advantage though. While he gives up stability and can get tripped up in his own mess, he’s unpredictable, which makes countering (Not literal in-game countering) difficult. A pro is, in nature, able to see another player’s style and fight them accordingly. Which is impossible to do with a guy with no style, since his moves are literally off the wall.

If randomly hitting buttons is the strongest tactic in a game, that’s a damn poorly designed game.

cafink:

If randomly hitting buttons is the strongest tactic in a game, that’s a damn poorly designed game.

Surprise: game designers can’t think of everything so this stuff kinda happens.

To elaborate, your definition of a “pro” as someone “able to see another player’s style and fight them accordingly” is arbitrary. A “pro” is someone who is extremely good at the game at hand. If someone consistently loses to a given strategy (like button-mashing), that player is no “pro.” In the game you’re postulating, the skill being tested obviously isn’t the ability to read another player’s style, but to randomly hit a lot of buttons, as evidenced by the fact that the button-masher can beat the style-reader. So, in this case, I’d say, the button-masher is the real “pro” at the game.

Of course, I don’t find games whose primary test of skill is that of button-mashing very compelling. How is mindlessly hitting buttons fun or interesting? That’s why I described such a game as “poorly designed.”

On the other hand, there are lots of well-designed games that test things like the ability to “read” other players, to formulate effective strategies, etc. That is to say, players who excel at these skills, instead of at things like button-mashing, tend to do best at these games. In a well-designed game like this, a button-masher has no hope of beating a player with a modicum of skill.

DrHeavyDDR:

Surprise: game designers can’t think of everything so this stuff kinda happens.

A game designer obviously won’t think of everything. But “what skill do I want my game to test?” is the first thing a game designer should think about. It’s the most basic, most important element of designing a game. If a designer can’t even get this right, then his game simply isn’t worth playing.

I would think the best way of countering a button masher is to play defensively, poke at your opponents and wait for a chance to strike.

For the Mario Party type minigames, I used to be king at the button mashers against anyone who played me. It was until my flexing forearm seizure method was trounced by the pen method that I could no longer win in games like this.

I’m gonna go ahead and assume you’ve never actually fought a button masher? Again, I’m no pro, but it’s a really difficult feat. Not impossible, oh no, but certainly not fun/fair. Button mashing leads to a bunch of crazy moves that are hard to block/counter/predict, which evens out with the generally stronger tactic of actually knowing what you’re doing.

So let me put it like this. Knowing the game, memorizing moves, etc., is stronger than button mashing, which relies on luck, speed, and drowning your opponent. Still, people considered pro might have the bad luck to not properly fight off a button masher who had the luck of pulling off that one grab move where their sword gets driven into your skull, explodes, then goes back in time, to use those pieces of skull as shotgun ammunition to shoot out their heart and eat it to recover health. And sometimes? They have the good luck of a button masher who ends up doing a blackflip to ring out.

Again, button mashing isn’t a skill, it’s a style to get cheap wins/attacks. It’s on a close, but lower level, as actually mastering the game.

DrHeavyDDR:

I’m gonna go ahead and assume you’ve never actually fought a button masher?

In what game? I can imagine a game in which button-mashing is better than all other strategies, but I don’t believe I’ve ever played such a game.

You mentioned fighting games. It happens that the popular fighting game Street Fighter II (and the various revisions thereof) is one of my favorite games. I don’t consider myself an especially great Street Fighter II player (my online ranked record for the Xbox version of HD Remix is about 50-50), but I have played against a lot of unskilled, button-mashing players, and I can assure you that they’re trivially easy to dispatch.

Again, I’m no pro, but it’s a really difficult feat.

Either you’re playing a terrible game (because it allows a button-masher to beat a “skilled” player) or you just aren’t very good at whatever game you’re talking about.

Not impossible, oh no, but certainly not fun/fair.

These are two very different statements. I agree that playing against a player who just mashes buttons isn’t very fun. I’ve said so more than once in this very topic, and suggested that games which emphasize button-mashing should be avoided for that reason.

But I don’t understand your assertion that it’s not fair. I can mash buttons just as easily as my opponent. We have the same options. Again, what is unfair about that?

Still, people considered pro might have the bad luck to not properly fight off a button masher who had the luck of pulling off that one grab move where their sword gets driven into your skull, explodes, then goes back in time, to use those pieces of skull as shotgun ammunition to shoot out their heart and eat it to recover health.

Sure, even the worst, least-skilled player can catch a lucky break against a “pro” once in a while. But one lucky break won’t lead to overall victory, at least not in any well-designed game.

Again, button mashing isn’t a skill, it’s a style to get cheap wins/attacks. It’s on a close, but lower level, as actually mastering the game.

There’s no reason this has to be the case. Indeed, there are lots and lots of games for which it isn’t the case. In those games, a button-masher has absolutely no hope of winning against a player who has mastered the game’s moves.

But it certainly could be the case for some game. And this is my main point: if for some particular game, button-mashing is anywhere close to mastering the moves in terms of being a viable strategy, then that is a horribly, terribly, badly-designed game.

You mean that as an example where button mashers have just as much a chance as seasoned vets, or a counterexample? Because I can very much tell you that the latter is true.

And that is why Ken is not, and never will be, God tier.

It gets really annoying how people always claim that you can always win in [insert fighting game that said person has barely played], even against pros, by button mashing. Whether it’s proven wrong by people like pro Street Fighter players (predicting their opponent’s next move and trying to be one step ahead) or pro Tekken players (who are INSANE for managing to memorize every frame of all of their character’s attacks in order to properly utilize combos and counterattacks), people always seem to blindly insist that button mashing is some godly, unstoppable strategy in every fighting game. Button mashers are also part of why I love counter-throws so freaking much.

Button mashing isn’t a technique… it would be like Ebsessor said… in a real fight, button mashing would be the equivalent to this

Do you really want to be like that?

Hey, that’s what we do.

Final boss of Super Mario Land

Ugh, I’m the worst button masher in history! I cannot press A repeatedly without my thumb cramping after five seconds. I’m the worst…

Meh, most of the characters that have that kind of technique in St2 have like 3 other moves that do way more damage(Honda’s super throw and super grab attacks, or whatever their names are would be an example)

However, rapidfiring in shooting games is badass.

I can do around 13 presses/second. Maybe someday I’ll be on par with Takahashi Meijin… althrough I doubt it.

Speaking of Soul Calibur 2, my cousin once beat me using his feet.