Off topic: button bashing

Hi VFDCers,

I wanted to ask you guys one question: how do you define a button basher? I am interested in the difference between 'playing a game properly' and not.

For example, you guys know when they show people in movie playing games and its clear that they are not really playing a game? like they are just pressing buttons randomly.

I want to know how you guys understand the difference between one person who is playing a game 'properly' and another who is not. what are the signs? what makes you understand?

the reason im asking is because im thinking about the process of understanding our enviroment, how we understand stuff without even being able to put it into words, but still understand it clearly.

 

A button masher is someone who presses buttons without knowing what the fuck they are doing just to get some kind of reaction on screen. People go abare playing final fight back in the days button mashing just trying to hit something and preserve that one quarter..

 

There different types of button masher

There are masher who are frantically mashing buttons going as far as just wiggling the pad or going in circles over the buttons

But there are also masher who just press the same single button over and over; an 'advanced' player of this type of masher would go through the buttons and/or combinations and pick the one he thinks is the most effective and mash the move out

 

Ok, so for example, if you could just see the hands of a player, or the face of a player, but not the action on screen, could you tell the difference between a 'knowing' player and a button basher?

I think I could. as I said, sometimes on TV you see actors pretending to play and you 'know' they are faking it! but how?

 

On TV I see body movements that are far too animated - strange gyrations - people tilting pads Left and right when playing driving games (or any game).

When I play I focus on the screen. I use the least amount of motion possible to do moves. Unless the intensity of my gaze is somehow awe-inspiring, I doubt it would make for good TV.

 

You can tell the difference between a person who knows what they're playing by the buttons they input.

In shooting games, there should be one trigger button that is being pressed a majority of the time, also the left stick shouldn't be moving around as much as the right stick. Round motions on any of the stick are rarely done in shooting games. Unless you like running in circles or moving your reticle in circles. The players finger should majority of the time be on the right stick instead of the face buttons.

Racing games, one button should be held constantly to accelerate. Very few times will the user's finger leave the trigger, unless to brake.

In fighting games there is a rhythm between offense and defense. If all you see is constant button pressing while a person is supposedly playing a fighting game, that is a dead give away they are mashing.

There is pauses in the hectic button presses of fighting games to defend an attack or watch a sweet grab animation.

Finger placement is also a give away. The shoulder buttons on either the left side or right side (XBOX LB+LT, RB+RT, or PS L1+L2, R1+R2) shouldn't have the index finger and middle finger simultaneously hovering over the triggers for a prolonged period of time. Imagine driving a car with both your feet on the accelerator and brake at the same time. There is some who do that, maybe, but the majority have one foot to a pedal at a time.

 

At a beginner level, you have players mashing. As in randomly pressing inputs hoping that they'll do something useful because they haven't figured out how to properly control their character.

At a higher level though, I tend to think mashing means pressing buttons and or wiggling the stick in order to do a move which you wouldn't be able to pull off with precision.

For example, in SF4, if my opponent has me in a block string and I'm Zangief, I can try to buffer a super(720 motion + P) at the end of every single poke he does and catch him if he messes up his timing or goes for a throw. However, I'd have to have pretty fast hands and timing to pull that off, and he can fake me out by simply holding up on the stick, while I'm putting in all this effort to do something rather difficult.

It's much easier for me to spin the joystick as fast as I can while mashing P, looking like an idiot in the process, but it gets the same effect in-game. I can still get him if he goes for a throw, and he can still fake me out by jumping, but I don't need to concentrate so hard on my execution. Yes, it shows a lack of skill, but hey if it's an easy way to do an otherwise difficult move, it's a legitimate tactic.

I tend not to mash with VF because it's just not that useful due to the game system.(unless I want to do P,P,P all day heehee) And there are so many differences between for example f + P and f,f + P, you really don't want the wrong move to come out.

The big problem with mashing is that it wears down the buttons and sticks, and in serious cases can lead to damage to the arcade machine. That tends to be why a lot of people frown on it.

Hitting particular moves which require quick button presses with intent though, I don't consider mashing, although many others do. Thus doing multiple move cancels with Aoi, doing 50 Sonic Booms in a row, or doing a crazy air combo in Marvel VS Capcom, all these are things I would NOT consider mashing, even though they can be incredibly irritating.

On the subject of playing a game 'properly', I think it means different things to different people. Smash Brothers is the best/worst example of this. The casuals and competitive players look at the game from such a different perspective that it might as well have been 2 separate games.

I can play VF but it's not the same as my 2 year old son playing VF, that's for sure. My wife plays World of Warcraft as though it's an RPG, reading all the lore and collecting cooking recipes and tailoring patterns. My brother-in-law plays it like a competitive deathmatch, sticking mostly to arenas, and my other brother-in-law used to play it like a team game, doing 20-man dungeons with his guild. In the 90's some people used to play Daytona USA to to get the best time possible, i.e. single player only. Other people just wanted to go multiplayer and make others crash. Who's to say who was right? You can't force others to play any game how you want.

In terms of whether I look like I'm actually playing a game, I can sometimes look like a total tool when I'm playing games. If I'm playing with friends, I hit the buttons in an exaggerated manner, make faces, cringe, yell, throw my hands up in the air, head bang, switch stance... If I'm against people I don't know so well, I behave better, but I still fidget a lot. I'll even instinctively jerk my head back out of the way when I get hit by something I didn't expect.

 

Thinking about it, its true that when people are playing FPS's, it would be silly to see them bashing buttons, as well as driving games.

Fighting games are more likely to cause button bashing. But again, when people are bashing furiosly, then they turn around and are completely calm...either they dont know what they are doing, or they are faking it.

I remember when I first picked up VF5 and played some friends. I just could not deal with lei fei spam. I was so annoyed that just by spamming lei moves I would get cornered and lose,

watching the hands of inocchi playing akira it looks like hes hitting the stick so fast that hes kind of bashing it, but no, hes doing some crazy dashes i suppose: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LP1i1Uspqc 4:08

I think that there is a point where mashing and being extremely good look exactly the same, sort of f-zero 'snaking' in terms of borderline akwardness, but then maybe this is the nature of video games inputs. with the wii remote for example, it would looks stupid if somebody was NOT playing 'properly'.