I want to take a stab at this topic to see how it affects people. The goal at the end of this is to not only figure out why people mash, but also how to prevent it, and also how to help people "git gud."
"Well everyone's a world class ground fighter until they get a punch to the face." ~ Mark Hunt
It's a quote that has been said many times over in many ways by various martial artists. Rather than being an insult to martial arts, it is a statement about human psychology. 10 years of martial arts training, a black belt, and some broken toes and fingers later, you finally feel confident. You step in the ring, stand ready with perfect form, the flag falls, you jump in and fire your shots, jump out when you're done so you have time to react to incoming moves. Unfortunately for you, that opponent of yours caught onto your dull and monotonous timing, and the moment you jump in this 2 year boxer clocks you. From there until you wake up confused on the mat, everything's a rush and you don't know what's going on.
I think this is the issue with DoA. We go though the tutorial, go through combo training, read all these wonderful tutorials on setups, KBD, etc You hear "get ready" and now you realize that you have absolutely no idea what you are doing. Then you hear "fight!" At which point you realize you have to do something, but still don't know what to do. The brain immediately has you start pressing buttons. The CPU (especially on lower difficulties) and online players of equal skill level can easily be defeated by this, because, by the time they realize you're mashing, their health bar is gone so they can't step out and punish your wiffing and unsafe moves. This results in a round being won, which unconciously tells you that you did the right thing. For each and every win, you are getting turned into a mashing machine. After enough wins, it takes a significant loss and humiliation to accept that your mashing was lucky wins and that you actually suck because you have absolutely no strategy.
If we can assume the above is true (and i think it's pretty safe to do that), we then we've identified the problem. However, right now, we don't know of any solutions. I'll tell you that i've been playing DoA for over a year now and I'm still suffering from this (though, i didn't become a crappy masher like others simply because I identified the problem before it became one). The issue is ultimately, we know how to do something, but we do not know when to do something. If you ask, "When do you sidestep?" The answer is "when they're using a linear attack." Assuming, first, that you actually do know what that even means (which is a toss-up), you still don't know when your opponent is going to use a linear attack. Higher level players already have the mindset and understanding that they're trying to counter-attack rather than simply throw something out there just to get the ball rolling (look at high level matches vs low level matches and you can see the obvious difference in between the "get ready" and "fight" messages [one's already KBDing and jumping forward trying to get optimal spacing, and the other's not]). Even then, if one asks how to identify when that would be (since there are a large number of possible attacks being thrown from 1 character, let alone the whole roster, you feel overwhelmed), the answer is "go to the lab" which is short for "i know subconsciously out of rot memorization and hard work, but i don't have any conscious recollection of any general enough patterns." To make matters worse, that's just sidestep. There is a large number of things you can do defensively (hold, block, crush, sidestep, kbd, FSD) and offensively (and we're assuming that you've figured out yourself that you need to try to start learning using only 1 character), and given that there aren't general rules (or if there are, they're not as well known as the various well written and recorded tutorials) we get the large number of mashers.
The obvious question will probably be, "if that's the case, why are people whom learn from decent players offline not affected by this?" Firstly, said people are probably already somewhat decent themselves, since this is most likely at a tournament setting (and people aren't going to go as complete scrubs). Secondly, if it's not at a tournament, it's alot more demanding to kick someone out of your house, or to leave theirs, than it is to leave an online room (thus you'll be more patient). Moreover, because of said difficulty of giving up, proper situations will become practiced (for example, the teacher will now separate and clarify close vs long range).
Please do not misunderstand, i do not mean to rag on tutorial writers and helpful people in the community. Quite the reversre, i'm trying to propose constructive criticism in a way that will hopefully result in better results for, potentially, less effort (because students and teachers alike have lives, too, and efficiency matters if we're trying to up our quantity of high quality players). My theory is merely that the mindframe and thinking patterns are so different from high to low, that it becomes easier to hit PS 8 T (quit game) than it is to spend time in a crowded room trying to talk and find common ground to why one person sucks and the other doesn't (when the other people don't care to learn, especially with the loud mic 12-year-old in the room). Given that the fun factor of the game depends entirely on the community, i also have to say this has to be addressed regardless of potentially hurt feelings (which i honestly hope no one is having).
Since my real life boxing's strongest weakness is my twitchy nerves and bad habits (my hands keep dropping after a combo), which cannot be worked on in DoA, and since there's still absolutely no incentive (i got other more important upgrades to make) for me to buy a "current gen" (old gen ports on a newer brick) console (and the direction the game is taking with it's DLC makes it unlikely that i'd purchase the game even if i did have said console), I feel it's important to bring my observations and conclusions to the community for peer review before it's harder to relate to them (and thus nothing gets done). Although this is of the commonly condemned format (first person and opinionated), i'm throwing this out there without a lot of evidence due to necessity, while hoping that I'm not the only one seeing this. If I am wrong, and this post has no value, may it fall into the obscurity of page 2.
"Well everyone's a world class ground fighter until they get a punch to the face." ~ Mark Hunt
It's a quote that has been said many times over in many ways by various martial artists. Rather than being an insult to martial arts, it is a statement about human psychology. 10 years of martial arts training, a black belt, and some broken toes and fingers later, you finally feel confident. You step in the ring, stand ready with perfect form, the flag falls, you jump in and fire your shots, jump out when you're done so you have time to react to incoming moves. Unfortunately for you, that opponent of yours caught onto your dull and monotonous timing, and the moment you jump in this 2 year boxer clocks you. From there until you wake up confused on the mat, everything's a rush and you don't know what's going on.
I think this is the issue with DoA. We go though the tutorial, go through combo training, read all these wonderful tutorials on setups, KBD, etc You hear "get ready" and now you realize that you have absolutely no idea what you are doing. Then you hear "fight!" At which point you realize you have to do something, but still don't know what to do. The brain immediately has you start pressing buttons. The CPU (especially on lower difficulties) and online players of equal skill level can easily be defeated by this, because, by the time they realize you're mashing, their health bar is gone so they can't step out and punish your wiffing and unsafe moves. This results in a round being won, which unconciously tells you that you did the right thing. For each and every win, you are getting turned into a mashing machine. After enough wins, it takes a significant loss and humiliation to accept that your mashing was lucky wins and that you actually suck because you have absolutely no strategy.
If we can assume the above is true (and i think it's pretty safe to do that), we then we've identified the problem. However, right now, we don't know of any solutions. I'll tell you that i've been playing DoA for over a year now and I'm still suffering from this (though, i didn't become a crappy masher like others simply because I identified the problem before it became one). The issue is ultimately, we know how to do something, but we do not know when to do something. If you ask, "When do you sidestep?" The answer is "when they're using a linear attack." Assuming, first, that you actually do know what that even means (which is a toss-up), you still don't know when your opponent is going to use a linear attack. Higher level players already have the mindset and understanding that they're trying to counter-attack rather than simply throw something out there just to get the ball rolling (look at high level matches vs low level matches and you can see the obvious difference in between the "get ready" and "fight" messages [one's already KBDing and jumping forward trying to get optimal spacing, and the other's not]). Even then, if one asks how to identify when that would be (since there are a large number of possible attacks being thrown from 1 character, let alone the whole roster, you feel overwhelmed), the answer is "go to the lab" which is short for "i know subconsciously out of rot memorization and hard work, but i don't have any conscious recollection of any general enough patterns." To make matters worse, that's just sidestep. There is a large number of things you can do defensively (hold, block, crush, sidestep, kbd, FSD) and offensively (and we're assuming that you've figured out yourself that you need to try to start learning using only 1 character), and given that there aren't general rules (or if there are, they're not as well known as the various well written and recorded tutorials) we get the large number of mashers.
The obvious question will probably be, "if that's the case, why are people whom learn from decent players offline not affected by this?" Firstly, said people are probably already somewhat decent themselves, since this is most likely at a tournament setting (and people aren't going to go as complete scrubs). Secondly, if it's not at a tournament, it's alot more demanding to kick someone out of your house, or to leave theirs, than it is to leave an online room (thus you'll be more patient). Moreover, because of said difficulty of giving up, proper situations will become practiced (for example, the teacher will now separate and clarify close vs long range).
Please do not misunderstand, i do not mean to rag on tutorial writers and helpful people in the community. Quite the reversre, i'm trying to propose constructive criticism in a way that will hopefully result in better results for, potentially, less effort (because students and teachers alike have lives, too, and efficiency matters if we're trying to up our quantity of high quality players). My theory is merely that the mindframe and thinking patterns are so different from high to low, that it becomes easier to hit PS 8 T (quit game) than it is to spend time in a crowded room trying to talk and find common ground to why one person sucks and the other doesn't (when the other people don't care to learn, especially with the loud mic 12-year-old in the room). Given that the fun factor of the game depends entirely on the community, i also have to say this has to be addressed regardless of potentially hurt feelings (which i honestly hope no one is having).
Since my real life boxing's strongest weakness is my twitchy nerves and bad habits (my hands keep dropping after a combo), which cannot be worked on in DoA, and since there's still absolutely no incentive (i got other more important upgrades to make) for me to buy a "current gen" (old gen ports on a newer brick) console (and the direction the game is taking with it's DLC makes it unlikely that i'd purchase the game even if i did have said console), I feel it's important to bring my observations and conclusions to the community for peer review before it's harder to relate to them (and thus nothing gets done). Although this is of the commonly condemned format (first person and opinionated), i'm throwing this out there without a lot of evidence due to necessity, while hoping that I'm not the only one seeing this. If I am wrong, and this post has no value, may it fall into the obscurity of page 2.
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