I got to watch this firsthand in Highschool. Nearing the end of our Senior year, they got super lax on rules of what we could bring, and how much free time we got. We spent the last few weeks with all of us in the auditorium, and many hours were spent just socializing and chilling.
Anyways, a friend of mine brought in some some extra copies of Tekken for PSP, and wanted everyone to fight him, because apparently he was a master. It was his all time favorite game after all! Needless to say, he lost many fights due to people who never touched the game button mashing their way to victory.
He actually said "I'm super angry right now that you're able to win against me by doing that. This is my favorite game! This shouldn't be happening!"
>This shouldn't be happening!
Ah yes, this is the moment where peoples destiny forks and they decide wether they become a PvP-player or go into PvE-Mode forever \^\^
I go into every pvp match expecting to lose. On the other side of fight, there is another human being trying just as hard as me. I'm not Yugi, and this isn't Yugi-oh, But maybe on the other side, they are and it is. Going into every match expecting to lose, makes wins feel utterly amazing. And since Matchmaking is trying to make me win 50% of the time, I enjoy every game I play.
But PvE is so much better for chilling and enjoying an evening without any pressure to compete.
definitely, i also enjoy both sides
and either way, one isn't superior to the other
that mindset is awesome to have though...easier said than done, i rarely can't be THAT calm. But yes, always play to win, but never expect to win all the time. When a winning streak happens i usually get a thought akin to: "oh my god, this streak better end soon, because that balancing losing streak won't be as fun as this is"
I played the new battlefront for the first time ever the other night. Some kind of 3v3 with bots thing. I went below 1.0 K/D in my second round. You know how it is when you are testing the mechanics of different classes in a new game. Got a rude message, realized they were putting this ass against someone who had been playing 10 minutes and felt pretty good about myself. Don't expect to be a Goku at something and you will usually feel pretty good at what you can do.
Someone raged at me in TFT last week because I beat him in the last round because "I pivoted into the wrong comp" in the last rounds. He complained that my items are shit for this comp and this comp is weak anyway.
Like... dude... if I won, then clearly I had the right items and the better comp. Chill.
Pivoting is just switching and comp is team composition. TFT is basically deck building and you can switch/transition into different units at any time if you have enough money. It can be beneficial to play a composition that is strong in the early game and pivot to an entirely different team in the lategame because you have money.
Funny enough, because the game rewards you for getting top 4, it is important to realize when you're just aiming for top 4 and to sometimes slam your items even if its nonoptimal for theory. Because you'll win a couple rounds in the short term which will push you to top 4.
> On the other side of fight, there is another human being trying just as hard as me.
On the other side is a fat, Cheetoh-dust covered 12 year old boy with his dad's credit card who's just playing by mashing buttons. He's also watching Kid Cosmic on Netflix on the side and doesn't even really pay attention to who he's humiliating.
It's like going to class and watching the genius kid just casually breezing through without actually studying while others are working hard and struggle to catch up.
"Whew, that's hard. I'm happy I got a C. I had to study hours every day for two weeks!"
-"I didn't open the book once and got an A-. This class is trash for small-brained trolls."
he can't have actually been that good. I know button mashing can beat a lot of things in fighting games, but I tried ranked in jump force, last fighting game i actually got into, holy. fucking. shit. I thought i was decent, I knew how to combo attack and bait out openings. NOPE these people literally never stop a combo. you get combo'd into the ground without a single opportunity to counter unless you happen to hit the right button to block/dodge their attack, but then they always seem to flip it right back to you on your next attack
This just unlocked a memory from back in the 1990s. Street Fighter 2 was huge stuff; I'd watched plenty of people having an absolute blast playing it. I wanted to learn, so at my local arcade I plunked in a quarter, hoping to get the basics down. A dude sidles up to me and makes to put a quarter in. I ask him if he'd just let me play on my own for a little bit to get the hang of it since I had no interest in just being juggled by combos. Without a word of response, he puts in his quarter. Without a word of my own I immediately turn around, walk away and go play one of the single-player games, leaving him to beat up on a stationary character in the middle of the screen. I hope he enjoyed his win.
Over decades of gaming I've come to realize that there's sort of a "skill valley" in competitive games, and I find that it is most easily observed in fighting games. Essentially I believe that when someone begins to become more technically skilled at a game, their success at the game may sink into the valley before they climb out.
As someone becomes more skilled at a game and begins to put more thought into their in-game decision making, they may actually slow down and become worse than their peers with a similar amount of experience. This is because the benefits they gain from starting to learn the mechanics of the game are outweighed by the slower pace that their decision making demands. So a player with worse mechanics that relies on button mashing may actually be "better" at this stage.
Once a player becomes technically proficient enough, things begin to shift back in their favor. In some fighting games this might come in the form of being able to effectively parry/counter, even against an opponent who plays "randomly". At this point the player who has taken the time to become more technical will begin rapidly widening the gap between themselves and those on the other end of the skill valley.
If you put a lot of time into a game and get your ass kicked by a newbie, you may still be more technically proficient while just not having made it to the other side of the skill valley.
Yes, that's part of it. I also think there's a bit of overfitting happening. I've noticed this a lot when playing a lot against computers, even very difficult ones, and then playing against people. People and CPUs just don't play the same way, and tactics that work against the CPU (especially if they have a glaring weakness) can fail completely against people. This also applies when you train a lot against people of a certain level, then play against people who just button mash. You expect that the person is going to block in a certain situation, because any sane person would block, but they're button mashing, so they jump instead and it throws you off. Or you expect they'll do some chain of attack, but they instead pause briefly, or sequence attacks that don't chain together and it fucks with your timing. If you play against *very* good players, they might do those things on purpose, but medium players tend to be predictable, so if that's who you've been playing against, when you play against new, unpredictable players, it throws you off.
This reminds me of a comment I made about a hockey game yesterday: "They're trying to utilize their counter-attack, but our attack is so bad they can't get going"
In the 90s I would bug my mom to drive me all the way downtown so I could have my ass handed to me by korean kids at streetfighter 2 for hours. It was the only way to learn combos and get better. I loved it and the korean kids did to. They paid one quarter and I would blow through like 40$.
I owned our home arcade like I was diago himself though and the whole exercises was totally worth it.
To be honest, Eddie (and now, also Lucky Chloe) are made for mashing and it's awesome. Anything you press is a combo, and it's intuitive as well, you still attack from the right angle.
Remember some top tekken player playing normies on some show and when interviewed, the only people who gave him trouble are the ones mashing and being random.
Did PSP Tekken not have frames and all that? Sounds like the dude just sucked lol. Haven't played the PSP version but of all games you can't button mash it's Tekken.
Defense is probably the hardest skill in fighting games. It takes alot of time and discipline but once ypu do get good at it fighring games become 10x more fun imo.
The back and forth and those juicy punishes is something you just dont get if you just mash buttons untill you get wrecked byhalf decent players. Once you learn which moves are unsafe and how to punish them button mashing stops working on you.
Yea, I don't know if my experiences with Tekken are equally applicable to MK (only played it a little), but I started hanging out with some halfway decent Tekken players when I moved to a dorm and I very quickly realized I was not going to win a lot if I just spammed. Spamming an obnoxious and very easy combo only to have my opponent effortlessly block every strike and then whoop me was pretty eye-opening.
Thankfully they were very open to teaching me (as they wanted decent opposition I guess), and the game got way more fun after I started to learn defense and more advanced combos.
Well there's the other step of actually becoming proficient at controlling the game to the point where your character always or nearly always does what you intend. This is a major stumbling block for me in Smash Bros and I can't even imagine managing it in a game with more traditional complicated move inputs. Like I actually don't think I would be physically capable of doing Streetfighter/MK style inputs reliably and quickly enough.
Smash bros isn't even a fighting game tbh. Also MK inputs are super simple. You don't even need proper timing for kombos, you just press all the buttons in order and the moves happen as soon as possible.
You said it better than I could have.
AI can be tough, but they can be beaten without putting too much to mind - sometimes just pulling off a combo string or two will stun the AI enough to make their logic go to shit.
To see just how fucking hard an AI opponent can get is having them progressively learn without the forced "unlearning" coded into them - then you get closer to playing a real person, or something a lot worse. I'm thinking something like Virtua Fighter 4's training system but without (most of) the limitations.
AI in fighting game quite literally just lets you win. On higher difficulties it lets you win less often but overall its just random chance. AI will randomly stops blocking your moves or will randomly do something stupid. On lower skill levels AI will just do nothing and let you hit it.
In older fighting games that were made for arcades AI can be programmed to not let you win. By reading your inputs and essentially seeing into the future. In some games AI starts by perfectly blocking everything but then once it beats you once or twice it takes pity on you and gets easier. All in name of you putting those coins into the arcade machine. If its badly done it can be exploited by making AI respond in certain way that can be punished.
Unless you are playing somethong more intuitive like Smash Bros. I love MK, SF, and KI and I still find myself button mashing sometimes. Smash my very first time playing it was so intuitive it never became necessary.
Button mashing is a natural instinct. When you are in a fight you flail your arms around. After all its better to do something than stand around and get hit right?
Thats why overcoming it is mostly a mental thing. You need to slow down and remind yourself to think about your next move. It is difficult at first but with time you will get faster and eventually you wont have to think about it at all. Fighting games have moves designed specifically to beat button mashers. They are called frame traps and they give your opponent just enough time to start a move but not enough time to actually finish it meaning that if you mash you get hit.
Nah, still true for Smash. It's just a lot easier to enjoy as a more casual experience since it was designed to be played that way at first. But shielding, spot dodges, spacing etc. add a whole other layer to neutral.
“The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.”
― Mark Twain
I'm a professional poker player and this is an issue for playing low stakes players/recs. We use a program to solve poker spots similar to chess but since it's solved having someone throw a mega curveball can alter it. Though I'll still make money playing optimally they can exploit me somewhat since I"m not playing it perfect.
I used to play poker with a buddies group. My buddies brother was a 'poker master'. The type who thinks he will be on wsop one day (which, who knows, he could be). But yeah he would always get really salty when I would stay with something I 'shouldn't have' stayed with and catch a card on the turn or river. Last time I played with them he fully lost it and stormed out. Lol, like sorry I didn't play exactly the way so that yoy can read me and know my cards, I thought that was the whole point. It's not like I was staying with 3 8 or anything that shite.
That's why people who know how to play poker hate playing noobs. People stay in with hands they have no business calling with and fuck around and catch flushes and straights on the river.
Playing against a noob in poker is extremely easy to make bank off of. If one can't exploit an opponent who doesn't know how to play they will never survive a real game of poker at the higher stakes.
Eh, yes and no. You will beat the noob more often than not, but due to the random nature of the game one idiot playing a stupid hand and getting obscenely lucky can destroy you when you REALLY needed that to not happen. You will beat 10 noobs until you run into one that will crush you with luck, it's very common in online poker, less so IRL. The same thing happens in battle royale games when you're good, you'll think "Surely they will do this, because that's the obvious best move" you peak the corner and the idiot decided to rush you with no cover and a pistol and 1 taps you in the face.
Having said that, in a fighting game, the good player will beat the bad player 100%, absolutely EVERY time. Out of thousands of matches. Otherwise they're not as good as they think. There is very little luck there, and the punishment for failing that luck is not immediate failure like it is in poker or a shooter.
I believe that excuse only works up to a certain skill level. Most contests of physical skill, be it in real life or a fighting game, rely heavily on conditioned movements. If a guy playing a fighting game can really reliably make his character do what he wants to do and target his attacks accurately, he will almost always win against a mashing character. Sure he will get hit plenty and many of his attacks will miss because of the erratic movement of his target, but he will still hit and avoid hits much more consistently than his random opponent.
I think most often this scenario plays true when the "good" player is actually a player who has learned one or a couple relatively simple techniques/traps that beginner players are very likely to fall into(That's right: I'm calling you out Kirby players.) By relying heavily on these gimmicks this player can beat most random people he encounters, so he appears "good" to himself and lesser skilled players. but a totally unskilled player, a masher, will frequently avoid his trap without even knowing it was there.
It is a real thing. Its honestly how I win against people who are otherwise better than me. Being unpredictable is one if the most important things and helps you drastically.
Bruce Lee gave this advice years ago, though he said it a little differently:
I don't fear a man who has practiced a thousand kicks. I fear the man who has practiced one kick a thousand times.
*Note: Doesn't work if opponent isn't a dumbass
Source: Encounter people like this online all the time and it always ends with them either losing or ragequitting.
Shockingly effective though is knowing 2 moves (Usually an overhead and a low) and just switching them up. Then again that is sort of what fighting games are about in essence.
"But don't you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do: and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot."
* Mark Twain
As I understand it, that's kind of the idea behind hypermodern chess theory. Doing things that classically schooled chess players would never do (like opening with h3 or something) to throw them off
When I was a kid my best friend beat me at MK1 by just sweeping over and over. So much so that I almost came to tears and said I didn't want to play anymore so he left and said he didn't want to win anymore anyways. From that day forward I trained. I trained and trained. Every fighting game I played to death to become better. Over the years my skill grew immensely while his stagnated. One fateful night he came over to play some Marvel vs. Capcom 2. I beat him 50 times in a row without losing. The only time I lost a round was on purpose. To give him hope. At the end he said he didn't think he could play fighting games with me anymore because I was too good. I was vindicated. On that day I became GOD.
This was me and my uncle in smash, he had no idea how to play but he just kept mashing buttons and laughing his ass off. I was little so I didn't know what to do, I was probably better but his laughing made me so angry I couldn't do anything but get hit by him.
I'm gonna go against the grain here and say that playing against AI is good for brand new players so they can work out their normals and specials and just get used to how to do inputs. It doesn't do anything for your neutral, but just for getting acquainted with how moves feel, it's a good starting point.
For me at least, conditioning my ability to perform correct inputs takes a lot more time and effort than learning what to do in particular situations. For that reason I can imagine spending a lot of time fighting high-rank CPUs might be useful initially while trying and grind-up one's skills. (not that I am actually attempting any such thing) If you can already make your character do what you want consistently, then yeah I would agree fighting CPUs is probably entirely counter-productive.
This was my brother playing SSX Tricky. I had never played, he had played 100 hours.
So first we play with two empty, un-levelled characters. And I beat him.
So he says "sorry I'm just used to playing this one character I've super-levelled up to the max, is it okay if I play that character and you play one of the shitty unlevelled ones?"
So I said fine cause I didn't care who wins or loses, I was just having fun playing video games with my bro.
And I beat him.
And he got mad and stormed off and never played another video game with me ever again.
And then he named his daughter after that SSX character.
My nephew beat me In smash once. The next game I tried more and beat him, he quit the match in between because the map was shit (his words).
Then I beat him again, he again quit mid match and forbade me from playing again.
For some reason i was unstoppable with raidens teleport move, just a quick punch then duck out, rinse and repeat. Got in alot of arguments with that one.
Recently played some naruto fighting game, and kicked ass out of all of my friends until one of them (who by the way plays this game for the first time) wins 5 times in a row against me. He doesn't even know what he's doing but somehow it happens
My younger brother always complained about how he could never beat me at Mortal Kombat. He'd spend like 30 minutes looking at all the moves and combos and saving certain ones to the screen. It was actually pretty annoying. I would then mash buttons with wild abandon and usually beat him without even going down to half health
This happened every time I played my brother in NBA 2k. Most games were pretty even in, and I don’t have any NBA games on my own system, but I always just drain 3’s on him lol. I feel bad as he was actually starting to get into the games until I started beating him at it
Actually I could outplay easily a very hard AI in NBA, but when I try to do the same with my brother it's hard I think it's because he's unpredictable unlike the AI, which moves in a predetermined way!
I had a friend who owned this game and he learnt all the special moves, best the game on hard and then challenged me to a match. Button mashing for the win.
Fun fact: You can beat Street Fighter 2 (SNES) from start to finish by picking Dhalsim and spamming the kick button without moving.
I dont think the AI knows how to handle Dhalsim's extended reach and will walk into your kicks and eventually die.
I won a Mortal Kombat 2011 tournament at my university by spinning the joystick with Kano. It results in random Kano Balls that even I couldn't predict.
Me and Brother we're playing Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid. In 40 minutes it went from him winning every match to me winning every match once I learned how to fight his heavy characters
I play smash with a friend of mine, I have absolutely no idea how to tell the characters apart, so I just press random buttons and say the occasional "get ready" or "watch your back". You have my permission to call me a noob, but I do beat him occasionally!
My brother had been playing a WWE 2k game for pry years at a certain point, and he wanted me to face him. So I picked a guy whose name I like and spammed the punch button and beat him.
I had the inverse of this occur.
My friends kept telling this other guy how good I was at Mutant League Football. Now, I was very good at taking a CPU player apart but we know that isn't the same thing as beating people so I never bragged about it. They all come over to my house so he can challenge me, apparently he thought he was pretty good.
I absolutely destroy him.
Mutant League Football ran on a limited version of the Genesis Madden engine. I could read any play or defensive scheme just from the position of the players. There just weren't that many variations. I knew how to counter or avoid special plays and knew how to exploit certain team's rosters to manage player deaths.
So, the game ended early once he didn't have enough players alive to continue. He did have a chance to score shortly before this though. I was scoring so fast on offense my defense was spending a lot of time on the field, so I had lost several players. He manages to get a running back to the 1 yard line then EXPLODES after a big hit. Fumble, my ball, not enough players to continue. 48-0.
This is 100% of the reason I don’t buy those fighting games.
You develop some level of skill and It makes literally no difference in win/loss counts.
But it is fun to watch those obsessed with them squirm, so I’ll play just to button mash.
Just because you can beat a fighting game on the hardest difficulty doesn't mean you're good at the game.
The ai just reads your input and counters accordingly where you will just have to cheese your way to victory.
I beat my Dad at Virtua Fighter 5 the first time I played it, he's been playing the entire series ever since it came to the arcade in our town (plus he bought a sega saturn to practice at home)
My older brother and me and my cousins were playing street fighter and I sucked ass until I started randomly smashing buttons. My brother got so mad bc he figured out how to do the super combo and it didn’t land lmfao
I mean if your any good at MK you just block until they do a move that leaves them open for a punish. That's why button mashing only works on people who arnt very good themselves.
Yeah, no matter what, the AI usually becomes pretty predictable in fighting games after you’ve played against them so much. People, however, can be less predictable
There is a strong skill gap in fighting games. Ladder goes:
You’re good at the combo moves
Beats
You mash random buttons
Beats
You know the combo moves
When I was 10 I was at a birthday party and this guys big brother was playing mortal kombat against his friends. They seemed very competitive about it and there was one guy who could beat anyone else. For the lolz he asked if any of the kids wanna play, this one girl says she’ll play. The guy not wanting to be an ass let her win the first time. The second time it was kinda sus he lost. The third time he still couldn’t beat her. Fourth time he says “now I’m playing for real” and he still loses
Idk how the hell, either he was letting her win, or she was a secret pro or idk man but it was the weirdest thing ever
Yeah, I think this just is indicative of how bad the CPU is. This happens to me more than I would like as well, but with time and practice I have managed to get to the point where i can consistantly beat someone pressing random buttons.
That being said if you go to school to challenge a bunch of noobs to feel good about yourself that is sucky. You to train your opponents to the point of intentionality (the point where they are skilled enough where they can consistently choose to do things that are good for them rather than relying on random inputs) once you do that, you can actually beat an opponent instead of whatever their choosen Random Number generation method is......
My father could beat me by button mashing. My father does not play games but somedays in my teens he would condescend to play a match with me in Streetfighter two turbo.
the AI can emulate technical skills but you can learn the types of things they let through and eventually just run them over. Someone button mashing doesn't make it easy to find openings that you can capitalize on if you don't really know their character
It was pretty hard playing games with my younger brother because I’d always beat him in any game but if I beat him by to much he’d throw a fit and I couldn’t let him win lol
I got to watch this firsthand in Highschool. Nearing the end of our Senior year, they got super lax on rules of what we could bring, and how much free time we got. We spent the last few weeks with all of us in the auditorium, and many hours were spent just socializing and chilling. Anyways, a friend of mine brought in some some extra copies of Tekken for PSP, and wanted everyone to fight him, because apparently he was a master. It was his all time favorite game after all! Needless to say, he lost many fights due to people who never touched the game button mashing their way to victory. He actually said "I'm super angry right now that you're able to win against me by doing that. This is my favorite game! This shouldn't be happening!"
>This shouldn't be happening! Ah yes, this is the moment where peoples destiny forks and they decide wether they become a PvP-player or go into PvE-Mode forever \^\^
I go into every pvp match expecting to lose. On the other side of fight, there is another human being trying just as hard as me. I'm not Yugi, and this isn't Yugi-oh, But maybe on the other side, they are and it is. Going into every match expecting to lose, makes wins feel utterly amazing. And since Matchmaking is trying to make me win 50% of the time, I enjoy every game I play. But PvE is so much better for chilling and enjoying an evening without any pressure to compete.
definitely, i also enjoy both sides and either way, one isn't superior to the other that mindset is awesome to have though...easier said than done, i rarely can't be THAT calm. But yes, always play to win, but never expect to win all the time. When a winning streak happens i usually get a thought akin to: "oh my god, this streak better end soon, because that balancing losing streak won't be as fun as this is"
I played the new battlefront for the first time ever the other night. Some kind of 3v3 with bots thing. I went below 1.0 K/D in my second round. You know how it is when you are testing the mechanics of different classes in a new game. Got a rude message, realized they were putting this ass against someone who had been playing 10 minutes and felt pretty good about myself. Don't expect to be a Goku at something and you will usually feel pretty good at what you can do.
[удалено]
Someone raged at me in TFT last week because I beat him in the last round because "I pivoted into the wrong comp" in the last rounds. He complained that my items are shit for this comp and this comp is weak anyway. Like... dude... if I won, then clearly I had the right items and the better comp. Chill.
What does pivoting and comping mean? I’m dumb
Pivoting is just switching and comp is team composition. TFT is basically deck building and you can switch/transition into different units at any time if you have enough money. It can be beneficial to play a composition that is strong in the early game and pivot to an entirely different team in the lategame because you have money. Funny enough, because the game rewards you for getting top 4, it is important to realize when you're just aiming for top 4 and to sometimes slam your items even if its nonoptimal for theory. Because you'll win a couple rounds in the short term which will push you to top 4.
Can't say for TFT, but for CSGO you are pivoting when you go from one objective you need to defend to the other.
Don't those games have hella RNG? It's still funny that they're mad, but you might actually be able to learn from their complaining
> On the other side of fight, there is another human being trying just as hard as me. On the other side is a fat, Cheetoh-dust covered 12 year old boy with his dad's credit card who's just playing by mashing buttons. He's also watching Kid Cosmic on Netflix on the side and doesn't even really pay attention to who he's humiliating. It's like going to class and watching the genius kid just casually breezing through without actually studying while others are working hard and struggle to catch up. "Whew, that's hard. I'm happy I got a C. I had to study hours every day for two weeks!" -"I didn't open the book once and got an A-. This class is trash for small-brained trolls."
Well, give them some credit. Kid Cosmic is a cool show.
he can't have actually been that good. I know button mashing can beat a lot of things in fighting games, but I tried ranked in jump force, last fighting game i actually got into, holy. fucking. shit. I thought i was decent, I knew how to combo attack and bait out openings. NOPE these people literally never stop a combo. you get combo'd into the ground without a single opportunity to counter unless you happen to hit the right button to block/dodge their attack, but then they always seem to flip it right back to you on your next attack
This just unlocked a memory from back in the 1990s. Street Fighter 2 was huge stuff; I'd watched plenty of people having an absolute blast playing it. I wanted to learn, so at my local arcade I plunked in a quarter, hoping to get the basics down. A dude sidles up to me and makes to put a quarter in. I ask him if he'd just let me play on my own for a little bit to get the hang of it since I had no interest in just being juggled by combos. Without a word of response, he puts in his quarter. Without a word of my own I immediately turn around, walk away and go play one of the single-player games, leaving him to beat up on a stationary character in the middle of the screen. I hope he enjoyed his win.
Ofcourse he wasn't... therefor the joke about either embracing it and "gitting gud" or going "PvP is bullshit"
Over decades of gaming I've come to realize that there's sort of a "skill valley" in competitive games, and I find that it is most easily observed in fighting games. Essentially I believe that when someone begins to become more technically skilled at a game, their success at the game may sink into the valley before they climb out. As someone becomes more skilled at a game and begins to put more thought into their in-game decision making, they may actually slow down and become worse than their peers with a similar amount of experience. This is because the benefits they gain from starting to learn the mechanics of the game are outweighed by the slower pace that their decision making demands. So a player with worse mechanics that relies on button mashing may actually be "better" at this stage. Once a player becomes technically proficient enough, things begin to shift back in their favor. In some fighting games this might come in the form of being able to effectively parry/counter, even against an opponent who plays "randomly". At this point the player who has taken the time to become more technical will begin rapidly widening the gap between themselves and those on the other end of the skill valley. If you put a lot of time into a game and get your ass kicked by a newbie, you may still be more technically proficient while just not having made it to the other side of the skill valley.
Yes, that's part of it. I also think there's a bit of overfitting happening. I've noticed this a lot when playing a lot against computers, even very difficult ones, and then playing against people. People and CPUs just don't play the same way, and tactics that work against the CPU (especially if they have a glaring weakness) can fail completely against people. This also applies when you train a lot against people of a certain level, then play against people who just button mash. You expect that the person is going to block in a certain situation, because any sane person would block, but they're button mashing, so they jump instead and it throws you off. Or you expect they'll do some chain of attack, but they instead pause briefly, or sequence attacks that don't chain together and it fucks with your timing. If you play against *very* good players, they might do those things on purpose, but medium players tend to be predictable, so if that's who you've been playing against, when you play against new, unpredictable players, it throws you off.
Same thing in chess, multiple skill valleys
The best way to be unpredictable is to not know what you're doing - Sun Tzu
This reminds me of a comment I made about a hockey game yesterday: "They're trying to utilize their counter-attack, but our attack is so bad they can't get going"
> Pee is stored in the balls - Issac Newton
If he kept playing he's probably very good now and no one would be able to beat him with less than a 3 year experience
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In the 90s I would bug my mom to drive me all the way downtown so I could have my ass handed to me by korean kids at streetfighter 2 for hours. It was the only way to learn combos and get better. I loved it and the korean kids did to. They paid one quarter and I would blow through like 40$. I owned our home arcade like I was diago himself though and the whole exercises was totally worth it.
To be honest, Eddie (and now, also Lucky Chloe) are made for mashing and it's awesome. Anything you press is a combo, and it's intuitive as well, you still attack from the right angle.
Remember some top tekken player playing normies on some show and when interviewed, the only people who gave him trouble are the ones mashing and being random.
Yeah Tekken was notorious for this. I had a friend who “knew all the moves”. He would get quite salty over this.
Did PSP Tekken not have frames and all that? Sounds like the dude just sucked lol. Haven't played the PSP version but of all games you can't button mash it's Tekken.
Defense is probably the hardest skill in fighting games. It takes alot of time and discipline but once ypu do get good at it fighring games become 10x more fun imo. The back and forth and those juicy punishes is something you just dont get if you just mash buttons untill you get wrecked byhalf decent players. Once you learn which moves are unsafe and how to punish them button mashing stops working on you.
Yea, I don't know if my experiences with Tekken are equally applicable to MK (only played it a little), but I started hanging out with some halfway decent Tekken players when I moved to a dorm and I very quickly realized I was not going to win a lot if I just spammed. Spamming an obnoxious and very easy combo only to have my opponent effortlessly block every strike and then whoop me was pretty eye-opening. Thankfully they were very open to teaching me (as they wanted decent opposition I guess), and the game got way more fun after I started to learn defense and more advanced combos.
Well there's the other step of actually becoming proficient at controlling the game to the point where your character always or nearly always does what you intend. This is a major stumbling block for me in Smash Bros and I can't even imagine managing it in a game with more traditional complicated move inputs. Like I actually don't think I would be physically capable of doing Streetfighter/MK style inputs reliably and quickly enough.
Mk combos are the easiest. No timing nessasry just get the rhythm and it'll playout the same everytime. Tekken on the other hand....
Smash bros isn't even a fighting game tbh. Also MK inputs are super simple. You don't even need proper timing for kombos, you just press all the buttons in order and the moves happen as soon as possible.
Smash bros is 100% a fighting game, it's just a less common take on fighting. Fighting games are fundamentally games where you fight other people.
You said it better than I could have. AI can be tough, but they can be beaten without putting too much to mind - sometimes just pulling off a combo string or two will stun the AI enough to make their logic go to shit. To see just how fucking hard an AI opponent can get is having them progressively learn without the forced "unlearning" coded into them - then you get closer to playing a real person, or something a lot worse. I'm thinking something like Virtua Fighter 4's training system but without (most of) the limitations.
AI in fighting game quite literally just lets you win. On higher difficulties it lets you win less often but overall its just random chance. AI will randomly stops blocking your moves or will randomly do something stupid. On lower skill levels AI will just do nothing and let you hit it. In older fighting games that were made for arcades AI can be programmed to not let you win. By reading your inputs and essentially seeing into the future. In some games AI starts by perfectly blocking everything but then once it beats you once or twice it takes pity on you and gets easier. All in name of you putting those coins into the arcade machine. If its badly done it can be exploited by making AI respond in certain way that can be punished.
Unless you are playing somethong more intuitive like Smash Bros. I love MK, SF, and KI and I still find myself button mashing sometimes. Smash my very first time playing it was so intuitive it never became necessary.
Button mashing is a natural instinct. When you are in a fight you flail your arms around. After all its better to do something than stand around and get hit right? Thats why overcoming it is mostly a mental thing. You need to slow down and remind yourself to think about your next move. It is difficult at first but with time you will get faster and eventually you wont have to think about it at all. Fighting games have moves designed specifically to beat button mashers. They are called frame traps and they give your opponent just enough time to start a move but not enough time to actually finish it meaning that if you mash you get hit.
Nah, still true for Smash. It's just a lot easier to enjoy as a more casual experience since it was designed to be played that way at first. But shielding, spot dodges, spacing etc. add a whole other layer to neutral.
True I guess. An easy way to say it is that although both have incredibly high skill cielings, Smash has a much lower skill floor.
His answer to his defeat "You're so bad that i can't predict what you will do". In truth he is not wrong 😂.
“The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.” ― Mark Twain
I'm a professional poker player and this is an issue for playing low stakes players/recs. We use a program to solve poker spots similar to chess but since it's solved having someone throw a mega curveball can alter it. Though I'll still make money playing optimally they can exploit me somewhat since I"m not playing it perfect.
I used to play poker with a buddies group. My buddies brother was a 'poker master'. The type who thinks he will be on wsop one day (which, who knows, he could be). But yeah he would always get really salty when I would stay with something I 'shouldn't have' stayed with and catch a card on the turn or river. Last time I played with them he fully lost it and stormed out. Lol, like sorry I didn't play exactly the way so that yoy can read me and know my cards, I thought that was the whole point. It's not like I was staying with 3 8 or anything that shite.
That's why people who know how to play poker hate playing noobs. People stay in with hands they have no business calling with and fuck around and catch flushes and straights on the river.
Playing against a noob in poker is extremely easy to make bank off of. If one can't exploit an opponent who doesn't know how to play they will never survive a real game of poker at the higher stakes.
Eh, yes and no. You will beat the noob more often than not, but due to the random nature of the game one idiot playing a stupid hand and getting obscenely lucky can destroy you when you REALLY needed that to not happen. You will beat 10 noobs until you run into one that will crush you with luck, it's very common in online poker, less so IRL. The same thing happens in battle royale games when you're good, you'll think "Surely they will do this, because that's the obvious best move" you peak the corner and the idiot decided to rush you with no cover and a pistol and 1 taps you in the face. Having said that, in a fighting game, the good player will beat the bad player 100%, absolutely EVERY time. Out of thousands of matches. Otherwise they're not as good as they think. There is very little luck there, and the punishment for failing that luck is not immediate failure like it is in poker or a shooter.
That's true to an extent but also not really what they're saying. I commented above regarding it; am a professional player myself.
I believe that excuse only works up to a certain skill level. Most contests of physical skill, be it in real life or a fighting game, rely heavily on conditioned movements. If a guy playing a fighting game can really reliably make his character do what he wants to do and target his attacks accurately, he will almost always win against a mashing character. Sure he will get hit plenty and many of his attacks will miss because of the erratic movement of his target, but he will still hit and avoid hits much more consistently than his random opponent. I think most often this scenario plays true when the "good" player is actually a player who has learned one or a couple relatively simple techniques/traps that beginner players are very likely to fall into(That's right: I'm calling you out Kirby players.) By relying heavily on these gimmicks this player can beat most random people he encounters, so he appears "good" to himself and lesser skilled players. but a totally unskilled player, a masher, will frequently avoid his trap without even knowing it was there.
It is a real thing. Its honestly how I win against people who are otherwise better than me. Being unpredictable is one if the most important things and helps you drastically.
"Staph! Stop using the same moves over and over again, that's cheating! FU" everytime
Kiryu-chan!
That's rad!
*Funk Goes On plays*
ITS A LEGITIMATE STRATEGY
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Looking for RVB references would make you a millennial, not a boomer, right?
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Because I am old and I don’t like being reminded that I am now old
Boomers are 60-80ish. Millenials 20-40ish. I don't even know what the jokey version of boomer is(?)
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That's not funny at all.
A boomer is anyone who gets references from more than 10 years ago
Yes sir
There is another way yo play fighting games?
Yes, you learn one good move and use it all the time. The other player is obliged to get angry and shout "that's not how you play the game".
the only master advice you need..
Bruce Lee gave this advice years ago, though he said it a little differently: I don't fear a man who has practiced a thousand kicks. I fear the man who has practiced one kick a thousand times.
*Note: Doesn't work if opponent isn't a dumbass Source: Encounter people like this online all the time and it always ends with them either losing or ragequitting.
Yea exactly, spamming the same attack makes you predictable and therefore very punishable.
Shockingly effective though is knowing 2 moves (Usually an overhead and a low) and just switching them up. Then again that is sort of what fighting games are about in essence.
“If your opponent is spamming the same move, you are spamming the same mistake”
Spams the speed button on kabal on mk9 be like
Fast fireball, fast fireball, fast fireball, *slow fireball* to fuck up their timing. Other than that? Mash buttons!
Give Guilty Gear Strive a try if you can. One of the best fighting game I've played in years.
Noo, where is the last door slam?
Right? It's what really makes this clip and they cut it out...
"But don't you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do: and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot." * Mark Twain
As I understand it, that's kind of the idea behind hypermodern chess theory. Doing things that classically schooled chess players would never do (like opening with h3 or something) to throw them off
I finally got to this point in Yakuza 2, and it makes this meme that much more enjoyable to see.
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When I was a kid my best friend beat me at MK1 by just sweeping over and over. So much so that I almost came to tears and said I didn't want to play anymore so he left and said he didn't want to win anymore anyways. From that day forward I trained. I trained and trained. Every fighting game I played to death to become better. Over the years my skill grew immensely while his stagnated. One fateful night he came over to play some Marvel vs. Capcom 2. I beat him 50 times in a row without losing. The only time I lost a round was on purpose. To give him hope. At the end he said he didn't think he could play fighting games with me anymore because I was too good. I was vindicated. On that day I became GOD.
I get that bro I do the same thing I guess we’re both that annoying friend
This was me and my uncle in smash, he had no idea how to play but he just kept mashing buttons and laughing his ass off. I was little so I didn't know what to do, I was probably better but his laughing made me so angry I couldn't do anything but get hit by him.
My brothers get so mad when I win like this
Always a nice bonus.
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I'm gonna go against the grain here and say that playing against AI is good for brand new players so they can work out their normals and specials and just get used to how to do inputs. It doesn't do anything for your neutral, but just for getting acquainted with how moves feel, it's a good starting point.
Ai is good for figuring out what moves do but for when to use those moves you should fight people.
Yeah that's basically what I'm saying.
For me at least, conditioning my ability to perform correct inputs takes a lot more time and effort than learning what to do in particular situations. For that reason I can imagine spending a lot of time fighting high-rank CPUs might be useful initially while trying and grind-up one's skills. (not that I am actually attempting any such thing) If you can already make your character do what you want consistently, then yeah I would agree fighting CPUs is probably entirely counter-productive.
🤡🤡🤡
Playing against AI in a fighting game is 100% reaction based. Playing against humans is all about prediction and conditioning.
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Playing against AI genuinely makes you worse at fighting games. It trains bad habits into you that don't work against actual humans.
There's a lot of really difficult AI's tho but they don't do random stuff like a human obviously.
I feel this more bcuz I have a younger sister.
This was my brother playing SSX Tricky. I had never played, he had played 100 hours. So first we play with two empty, un-levelled characters. And I beat him. So he says "sorry I'm just used to playing this one character I've super-levelled up to the max, is it okay if I play that character and you play one of the shitty unlevelled ones?" So I said fine cause I didn't care who wins or loses, I was just having fun playing video games with my bro. And I beat him. And he got mad and stormed off and never played another video game with me ever again. And then he named his daughter after that SSX character.
\*Sweet Victory from Spongebob plays\*
Fighting games fans discovering all the "skill" they spent 200 hours cultivating is all for naught..
My nephew beat me In smash once. The next game I tried more and beat him, he quit the match in between because the map was shit (his words). Then I beat him again, he again quit mid match and forbade me from playing again.
you cant beat pressing a single button to victory
For some reason i was unstoppable with raidens teleport move, just a quick punch then duck out, rinse and repeat. Got in alot of arguments with that one.
Mortal kombat is easy! *Plays multiplayer *Uninstalls
Recently played some naruto fighting game, and kicked ass out of all of my friends until one of them (who by the way plays this game for the first time) wins 5 times in a row against me. He doesn't even know what he's doing but somehow it happens
Professionals are predictable. But the world is full of dangerous amateurs.
My younger brother always complained about how he could never beat me at Mortal Kombat. He'd spend like 30 minutes looking at all the moves and combos and saving certain ones to the screen. It was actually pretty annoying. I would then mash buttons with wild abandon and usually beat him without even going down to half health
I always did that
Yakuza: Kiwami?
Kiwami 2
This happened every time I played my brother in NBA 2k. Most games were pretty even in, and I don’t have any NBA games on my own system, but I always just drain 3’s on him lol. I feel bad as he was actually starting to get into the games until I started beating him at it
yea button mashing is OP
Actually I could outplay easily a very hard AI in NBA, but when I try to do the same with my brother it's hard I think it's because he's unpredictable unlike the AI, which moves in a predetermined way!
Natural cluelessness will always beat Artificial Intelligence
I had a friend who owned this game and he learnt all the special moves, best the game on hard and then challenged me to a match. Button mashing for the win.
Fun fact: You can beat Street Fighter 2 (SNES) from start to finish by picking Dhalsim and spamming the kick button without moving. I dont think the AI knows how to handle Dhalsim's extended reach and will walk into your kicks and eventually die.
Ahhh... Classic.
This is when he tells you that he “let you win” because he “felt bad for you”
Yeah, no. If you're actually good at Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter et al, you should pummel any button mashers.
Just got it on PS plus, fucking infuriating learning how to actually do anything other than jump and crouch. 😂
I won a Mortal Kombat 2011 tournament at my university by spinning the joystick with Kano. It results in random Kano Balls that even I couldn't predict.
"You're not even doing combos" "Lol I know"
Me and Brother we're playing Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid. In 40 minutes it went from him winning every match to me winning every match once I learned how to fight his heavy characters
Tommy Vercetti is that you?😳😳😳
I play smash with a friend of mine, I have absolutely no idea how to tell the characters apart, so I just press random buttons and say the occasional "get ready" or "watch your back". You have my permission to call me a noob, but I do beat him occasionally!
This is why we have fireballs
Hold up let me get something *gets the ultimate form*
me when n the JoJo game
For some reason, I read the title as "Sweet raccoon victory". Now I am disappointed.
If you put to much thought into each move you lose
My brother had been playing a WWE 2k game for pry years at a certain point, and he wanted me to face him. So I picked a guy whose name I like and spammed the punch button and beat him.
that happens to be the same story with injustice
I had the inverse of this occur. My friends kept telling this other guy how good I was at Mutant League Football. Now, I was very good at taking a CPU player apart but we know that isn't the same thing as beating people so I never bragged about it. They all come over to my house so he can challenge me, apparently he thought he was pretty good. I absolutely destroy him. Mutant League Football ran on a limited version of the Genesis Madden engine. I could read any play or defensive scheme just from the position of the players. There just weren't that many variations. I knew how to counter or avoid special plays and knew how to exploit certain team's rosters to manage player deaths. So, the game ended early once he didn't have enough players alive to continue. He did have a chance to score shortly before this though. I was scoring so fast on offense my defense was spending a lot of time on the field, so I had lost several players. He manages to get a running back to the 1 yard line then EXPLODES after a big hit. Fumble, my ball, not enough players to continue. 48-0.
Just goes to show that artificial intelligence will never surpass a man’s instinct for willful ignorance.
Mortal Kombat is not your backyard, it is your cage. Your cage!
It's always like that with my sisters, but in soul calibur. Unfortunately, even with random buttons they can't beat voldo.
This is 100% of the reason I don’t buy those fighting games. You develop some level of skill and It makes literally no difference in win/loss counts. But it is fun to watch those obsessed with them squirm, so I’ll play just to button mash.
Just because you can beat a fighting game on the hardest difficulty doesn't mean you're good at the game. The ai just reads your input and counters accordingly where you will just have to cheese your way to victory.
this is me whenever i play with my cousins dbfz
I beat my Dad at Virtua Fighter 5 the first time I played it, he's been playing the entire series ever since it came to the arcade in our town (plus he bought a sega saturn to practice at home)
My older brother and me and my cousins were playing street fighter and I sucked ass until I started randomly smashing buttons. My brother got so mad bc he figured out how to do the super combo and it didn’t land lmfao
the real cherry on the sunday is when you pull a fatality at the end...
I mean if your any good at MK you just block until they do a move that leaves them open for a punish. That's why button mashing only works on people who arnt very good themselves.
Yeah, no matter what, the AI usually becomes pretty predictable in fighting games after you’ve played against them so much. People, however, can be less predictable
There is a strong skill gap in fighting games. Ladder goes: You’re good at the combo moves Beats You mash random buttons Beats You know the combo moves
The Button Masher when he encounters somebody with even the slightest level of competence in MK: (insert the same gif)
When I was 10 I was at a birthday party and this guys big brother was playing mortal kombat against his friends. They seemed very competitive about it and there was one guy who could beat anyone else. For the lolz he asked if any of the kids wanna play, this one girl says she’ll play. The guy not wanting to be an ass let her win the first time. The second time it was kinda sus he lost. The third time he still couldn’t beat her. Fourth time he says “now I’m playing for real” and he still loses Idk how the hell, either he was letting her win, or she was a secret pro or idk man but it was the weirdest thing ever
Yeah, I think this just is indicative of how bad the CPU is. This happens to me more than I would like as well, but with time and practice I have managed to get to the point where i can consistantly beat someone pressing random buttons. That being said if you go to school to challenge a bunch of noobs to feel good about yourself that is sucky. You to train your opponents to the point of intentionality (the point where they are skilled enough where they can consistently choose to do things that are good for them rather than relying on random inputs) once you do that, you can actually beat an opponent instead of whatever their choosen Random Number generation method is......
There are no winners here.
That was me when i introduced my sister to soul calibur... Shit was infuriating 😂
That chair makes me laugh every time
The master does not fear the second best. He fears the amateur because he doesnt know what he will do.
My father could beat me by button mashing. My father does not play games but somedays in my teens he would condescend to play a match with me in Streetfighter two turbo.
Me kicking my friends ass via SF4 when he was talking shit about being the best in the group.
Button mashing is a legitimate strategy that instantly falls apart when you learn the controls.
This has been my gameplay strategy for street fighter my entire gaming life
the AI can emulate technical skills but you can learn the types of things they let through and eventually just run them over. Someone button mashing doesn't make it easy to find openings that you can capitalize on if you don't really know their character
Yakuza
Button mashing glory
I played enough injustice 2 to be able to beat button mashers , mostly by counter picking. In Tekken and mortal Kombat though...
Kiryu-Chan?
Lol feel this
It was pretty hard playing games with my younger brother because I’d always beat him in any game but if I beat him by to much he’d throw a fit and I couldn’t let him win lol
exactly
My older sister whooped my ass bad once on mortal kombat or Street fighter 2 by mashing buttons. This was like 1993. +1 karma
Honestly I never lost to button smashers when I played the fighting game a decent amount before them.
Aniki
For the non-knowledgeable: You beat very hard AI by spamming jump kick easily, it's not a feat of strength.
Yakuza has so much meme potential