The term "button masher" is by far the stupidest phrase in all of gaming. You can button mash on any game. You'd still get beat by anyone who knows the way around the game. Goes for SF3, Tekken, DOA, SCIII, anything.
Lemme tell you why I prefer Tekken, SCIII over DOA (ultimate is the furthest I have played)
You have to get an overall feel of what you are playing before you can judge it. To me, the game simply lacks depth. I've been playing it on DC and XBOX, I have YET to prefer it over Tekken.
I don't know if they fixed it, but what i've played with DOA:U, the counter system is still broken to shit. I've heard they fixed the damage, that's good. But if they have the same style of gameplay concerning countering and combo's (as someone else put it perfectly, "rock paper siscors"), they are going down the same dirty road.
They also need to fix the style of player's taking attack's. Again, I don't know if they kept this in DOA4, but countering out of the "pseudo combo's" needs to go. Some know what I mean.
Now for the rest explaining depth.. This is why tournament player's like Tekken, SC3, VF4 etc over DOA.. it's basically a more solid game. Trust me, any tournament player of 3D fighter's will say the same thing, and defenantly prefer the 3 over DOA. It's hard to explain how it's solid, but I'll try.
DOA does not have the level of priority of attack's that Tekken has. There is more room to act on your character's attacks (which leads to better mind games). With the Tekken movelist, they have varying level of attacks that have low to high priority, with varying distance. Combine it with a game speed that suit's it. It gives you more options to act based on what you've done, and what the character has done. You have the same "feel" in this part that SC2 and VF4 (which is the most solid btw) has. God, I can't explain it but people know exactly what im talking about.
People have their preferences over games. When you are comparing depth, some things are on top of another. Remember Kakuto Chojin? I played it a bit. A lot worse in the priority+movelist+speed department. That's why it's garbage. It's like from VF4 to DOA (DOA to Kakuto). Then you go from Kakuto to Kabuki Warriors. More garbage on the pile. More reduction in depth.