Is it a bad habit to mash buttons?

[EternalMelody]

What are your thoughts on button mashing? To give an example, when executing Ram's PPP, instead of just pressing P exactly 3 times at the right moments, what I do is that I just mash P until the third P in the sequence comes out. So I end up pressing P about 4-6 times instead of 3 times. Likewise, when recovering, I just mash the buttons instead of pressing it one time.

Is this bad habit?

[TD]

I've found that with this method it works but overall it may affect your thinking in games. If you're doing your combos on autopilot, you might end up playing on autopilot as well, which is much worse than mashing combos.

[Penguinator]

Depends completely on the situation, but in general it's a bad habit. You can use the good sides of mashing buttons without suffering in accuracy by doing piano inputs.

Usually mashing decreases your accuracy to produce correct moves, which will make you drop combos or at least prevent you from hitconfirming properly. However, in neutral, your first hit might clash and if you pressed the button only once, you'll go through the recovery of the move (unless it's a multi-hit move) while being vulnerable to opponent's hits instead of immediately canceling into another normal or special you were mashing. One common example is when a DP clashes with a normal; without mashing if it's a multihit DP, the latter hits come out, but the invulns may have run out, while with mashing you might get another DP with new invulns for much better chances for an advantageous trade.

Teching is usually done with mashing (holding back + one/two buttons and mashing two others which results in a quick air FD) even among top players, but if you know the spots where untech time ends after the last hit in a combo, the fastest possible tech can be easily baited with various airthrow OSes which means you need to alter the timing of the tech accurately.

[Effenhoog]

It's a bad habit.  I used to do this a long time ago but fortunately I ironed it out early on before it became too much of a long term habit.

There are specific uses for controlled mashing of buttons or intentionally pressing a button multiple times in a row but 99% of the time you should only be pressing buttons the minimum amount of times it takes to execute the commands you want.

[PandaFace]

definitely a bad habit.

 

unfortunately for me ive been doing it since i was a little kid playing tekken 2-3. I will never break it now -_-

[reaVer]

I see this forum is still living in 2006...

The short summary is that mashing for a sequence is not a problem unless it prevents that sequence from occurring. So Elphelt's 5HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH is completely fine. If you want to develop mixups in those areas, more careful training may be required.

Now here's the longer story: Mashing is indicative of the supposed 'autopilot' (your instincts). And here's where we're going into something they should be teaching kids in primary school but simply won't because teachers are incompetent. Any person uses instincts to fulfill basic tasks: nobody is explicitly putting one foot in front of the other when performing the task of walking; nobody is explicitly bringing the fork to their mouths while eating, these things most humans can do without putting any thought on it. What sets humans apart from lesser beings is that their instincts can also perform more complex tasks, like driving a car and flying a plane; again, neither drivers nor pilots are explicitly moving the controls in their brains, their basic train of thought is "I wanna go this way!" and their body will take the required actions to make this happen. With gaming, scientists have found out that the human brain is capable of learning much more intricate things compared to the simple task of flying a plane or driving a car. When Xellos was in his prime in starcraft and his brain was scanned when playing vs a complete newbie it showed that Xellos was playing with the instinctive part of his brain (the back) and the new player was playing with the rational part of his brain (the front). This implies that a portion of the decision making can also be done instinctively.

Why is this important? Because your instincts are at least twice as fast as your rational brain. Anyone that has watched my matches vs N.O can see this in action. I would IAD at him to attack, he would jump throw at nearly the same moment. And I think instincts can get even faster than that. For the rational brain to do the same, you would need an IQ of like 200; which is simply not available to even the most practiced human.

Now here's where twitch gaming (not the streaming site) sets itself apart from other games. To git gud at this game (and BB and and and) you will need to have your instincts up and running at all times. To get the maximum out of your tempos, you cannot afford to have your brain contemplate every action you make. This is why autopilots are mandatory. The defining difference between a good player and a bad player is how this autopilot gets operated. Bad players will shut off their rational brains and basically slam their heads into a brick wall as far as the game is concerned. The good players will have both parts operating. Now, I think most people here would agree that spectators have a completely different perspective on the game than players do; and even with what I'm about to tell you that still won't change all that much. But, your rational brain is supposed to become such a spectator and needs to send instructions to the 'autopilot' on the fly. That means that your rational brain is actively reviewing your play and formulating a gameplan on how to continue and your instincts are executing that gameplan. That is what makes a good player (and this works incredibly well as a car driver too (life lessons 1o1)). Once you get this down, the line between your instincts and rational part of your brain blurs and that pretty much opens an insane world to you. You can then go to trainingmode to learn a new combo and then immediately use said combo without further contemplation; you can then use matches to review whether the combo is working for you or you need to revise it in some way. If you want, you can do these revisions during the matches you're playing, this helps when matchups give you specific combos.

And from here it's going to be a matter of priority of what is important and what isn't important. You inserting Elphelt's 5H~HHHH as 5HHHHHHHHHHHHH is irrelevant, any similar scenario is also irrelevant; and trying to fix this is most likely going to be a waste of your time. Instead, you're probably better off spending your time on winning matches and winning (online) tournaments.

[RifleAvenger]

Honestly, despite what some people have said, I've gotten by pretty well in ASW games hitting the button 2-3 times.  It's subconscious, and it doesn't affect most of my combos that much (in some cases, it's better because the input buffer is more likely to pick it up).

That said, the level of mash in that video was too much, especially for a character like Ramlethal that depends heavily on target combos.  Mashing in the inputs is only bad when it leads to you doing canned strings and screwing up combos (like the Ram only doing 5PPP or 5KKK in the fight).  For a personal example, I used to mash Minazuki's ground BnB so hard that I routinely dropped anti-air starters, which made it far less riskier for people to jump in on me.  It also revealed a bit too much limitation in my "autopilot."

The only game I've ever played where no degree of input smashing is really allowed is Mortal Kombat.  I recently decided to try it out as a show of friendship, trying to unite the local FGC at my school, and I had a hell of a time with the inputs.