I’ve always wondered about this in fighting games that have certain moves which would hit more times if you mash the buttons: why do game designers do this? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, some examples would be in Street Fighter games, some throws would go longer if you mash, and obviously, the beloved Marvel series, ultras hit harder if you mash, etc…
Why not just have a set number of hits after you have executed the move, and as for damage, just randomize a range instead of having the players mash it up to get some extra damage?
So I think it comes down to 2 things: do this to increase the fun factor or somehow making things more strategic by letting the players decide when to mash, when not to, and when to stop?
To all the experienced players out there, does the latter part of that statement hold any truth?
I think holds make sense for that very reason.
If I’m playing Guile in ST, and Ken is hitting me with knee bash, do I mash to get out of the hold, or do I charge flash kick?
For mashable supers though, I got nothing.
Though in some games it was a test of skill to get optimal damage on mashable supers, mashing is so easy in Marvel 3 though you wonder why they even bothered.
For example on GG, Sol’s Ground Viper is a mashable special that has more hits and changes the properties of the special based on the mashing
It has an strategic value since sometimes you don’t want the 10 hit version of the special based on positioning and time you do the special on your combo
As for supers, i also got nothing
Like CanadianDstryr said, some games use it as a sort of skill test, on the case of MV3 i assume it was to give the player something to do while the char is doing the super, i don’t know
Also i noticed that a lot of people have a lot of fun while mashing, just look at noobs and scrubs
For the same reason you need to click every time to attack in Diablo- To increase immersion in an action game. You can re-design it to be able to kill a group of monsters with just 2 clicks but then Diablo would become less engaging.
With that said, fighting games don’t really need it since they are input intensive already and the super animations usually serves as a small pause to rest for 2 seconds.
This is also why QTEs were created- To make cutscenes more engaging. But there the right solution was to simply have less cutscenes and replace them with more of the actual game, not “press a button when it pops on the screen!” silliness.
You don’t have to click every time to attack in Diablo, you can kill a group with one click.
And generally it is pretty useless. Mashing to escape certain conditions or to perform an attack makes some sense from a risk/reward perspective and giving/limiting options. But mashing for damage/hits is kind of odd I think.
It helps to get both beginners and scrubs feeling like they are doing something
For better players there are strategies in when to mash and when not to. Some combos only work with a precise amount of mashing. Sometimes mashing for overkill damage when a character is already dead is giving your opponent meter that you don’t want to give them.
I always thought it was to increase immersion,
make you feel like you’re physically putting more into the move to increase its damage.
I certainly felt that way in regards to DMC3’s “Crazy combos ™”.
The idea was to add an option to try to do more damage. A shitty idea, or badly implemented, at the very least, but it was added to WW, so it was added to fighting games. That’s probably all there is to it.
I think it’s mostly fun factor. Mashing out Commando’s HK throw is an absolute blast in MvC2 for those rare moments you actually get the throw in.
All out attacks in P4A fall into this weird kind of middle ground where it’s only about a medium difficulty in mashing out to full, but mashing out to full is pretty important because the final hit changes properties pretty severely if you get all 15 hits in.
There’s also countermashing for things like capture attacks or damage reduction. Those are probably things to keep a player interested when they’re being hit.
Best reasons for mashing:
Beam battles in DBGT Final Bout
Weapon clashes like in SamSho and Bushido Blade. Although didn’t they recently reveal the SamSho clashes were just random?
And on the topic of DBZ… I’d make a game that centered around mashing, so that the player would be physically tired after each match.