[Bynary Fission]

Originally Posted by Dronak

I agree that mashing isn't the greatest thing to do, but in some cases for some people, it's the only way to get through a song. I try to avoid mashing most of the time, but harder songs often don't give me much choice. As the songs get faster and contain more arrows grouped more closely together, my ability to read them as separate arrows (or sets of arrow patterns) gets worse, not to mention my fingers lose their ability to keep up with the tempo. When that happens, especially if I can't read the arrows, mashing is my only hope of staying alive and passing the song. And my hand-eye coordination probably isn't getting better as I get older, so that's working against me, too, and sometimes leads to more mashing.

That is understandable. I even do something like it in a few ultra dense parts, albeit unintentionally. The reason that I avoid it at all costs is because it does not improve your reading skills. I've found that the only way I can improve is to play songs at my level, and gradually increase the difficulty of the song I play, which is what you stated below. You stated you can do well on songs at the Difficult to VD range, so it would be best for you to stick to those. For me, it is up to FMO.

Age may play a factor, but I know you can go further before you hit as limit, whether it is imposed by age, your playing style, or some other external factor.

Originally Posted by Dronak

Generally when I'm playing songs, I'm trying to improve my scores along the lines of: fail to pass, pass to FC, FC to SDG, SDG to PC/AAA. Obviously to get to a PC, I can't mash. However, mashing can mean the difference between failing and passing. And I have to pass a song to see all the arrows in it before I have a chance at FCing it. The better the score I'm going for, the less mashing I can do. Sometimes it comes down to one or a few small sections that I have to mash through to FC the song. Through repeated plays, I try to cut down on the mashing. But I don't see mashing as something to avoid completely. It's not a great technique, but it has its uses. And if you can't stop mashing eventually, you'll never be able to get the best scores in the game. For anyone who wants to reach the top, that should be enough reason to stop mashing sooner or later. Me, I never expect to reach the very top, so I usually do what I need to in order to improve my scores.

Of course. Mashing may have it's uses, but you gain nothing from it in the long run. In fact, I have been able to beat every one of my mashed scores on old songs without mashing. How long this takes varies with everybody, but if you cannot pass the song without mashing, then you are obviously not ready for it. It's best to play what you can and gain skill from that, instead of playing songs that are far beyond your skill level. In time, you will find that you can destroy all the songs that you once had to mash on.

Originally Posted by Dronak

For the most part, I rarely play the songs that require a lot of mashing for me though. They're not that fun for me. I find them to be too fast most of the time, with dense arrow patterns that seem to be that way just to be difficult, because many times I can't see/hear how the arrows match the music on the hardest songs. I'm not saying they're bad stepfiles or anything -- perhaps I'm just not good enough to truly appreciate them. But since I want to have fun, I tend to play middle-difficulty songs. I can play these fairly well, but still get a challenge. Somewhere around 7-8 is where I start getting challenged, but can do OK. At 9+, things tend to get much worse. I probably used to mash lower difficulty songs, but over time I improved enough to avoid that. I even got my first difficulty 6 PC the other day, something I probably never imagined when I might have had to mash parts of them.

Exactly! Once you master the basics, you can move on to the hard songs. Soon, anything below a 9 will be laughable in difficulty. If you find songs that you find too hard to enjoy playing, then don't play them. Find the difficulty that suits you best, and stick with that until you feel you are ready to move on.

I hate playing all the easy songs, but mastering those enabled me to move on to the songs I enjoy playing.

Originally Posted by Dronak

So I guess the bottom line is that I do mash (one-handed, just like I play all the time) if I feel like I have to, but I try to avoid it, and over time I try to reduce how much I mash. But some songs still force me to do it, because I'm just not good enough to get through them without it. My scores are the best I've been able to get. OK, I mashed some of them, but that means they're still worse than people who didn't mash, so I don't think there's a real problem with that.

The only issue I personally see is that it is a score you didn't earn. Sure, some people might be worse, but that doesn't justify it as being a fair and legit score.

If you need to mash, go ahead. I'm just stating I personally disagree with it.


~Bynary Fission