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On December 21 2010 18:33 KwarK wrote:
I don't think it works that way. I believe that a high apm player and a low apm player take the exact same length of time to enter in a familiar sequence of commands. There's a limit to how fast you can do 1a2a3a and both players' fingers should know it well enough to do it at pretty much touch typing speed. The difference between low apm and high apm players is not how fast they can deal with the situations they are presented with but rather what they do, and how effiicently they do it, between those situations.
You need to be more considerate of reaction time. You need to account for awareness, based on how fast they are switching between battles and macroing.
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I will admit that APM is an indicator of skill. Not the average but the current(?) one.
You might see people spamming or not in the beginning but if your current APM is high means you are able to take on multiple commands at the same time meaning you can handle multitasking well so you're better off handling a lot of situations with efficiency whereas with low APM you'd be doing everything slower. It doesn't always mean that more is better. Just that more in this case means you can do more actions in deciding how you use those actions.
I'm now at 150-180 APM when I macro and multitask and before I rerolled to Terran I was at 90 APM just micro'ing stuff. Having better mechanics will usually mean as a side effect that your APM will increase in activity due to mechanics (maybe not on average but current should be).
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I can be very fast when i actually think fast enough and in advance, so in my case when i play with higher APM = i think faster and more in advance. When my apm dropping, it is signal that i don't think fast enough or clearly - means i don't have 100% decision making which is the most important thing in SC.
However i have beaten people with 350 apm before and i am only 200-250 so the apm isn't the only skill factor. Also i have games where 130 - 170 apm players owned me....Personally i find apm very important as it shows my decision making and speed of thinking.
Also everybody can click really fast with mouse, but they usually don't. I tried to focus on clicking very fast with my mouse and it is really possible to click double or triple your normal speed. Also if you have problems with accuracy, try to focus on the outcome of the action you are performing and not actually about hitting accurate with your mouse and the accuracy will come by itself - that works for me. When i focus on accuracy i am slow as fuck and actually less accurate.
Keyboard speed is another topic though. I think it is only about the practice and speed of your hand on the keyboard. Also accuracy is the most important here - nothing worse then trying to hit a key and miss it 2-3 times. That just throws you of the game so much.
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APM isn't the measurement unit of skill but the reflection of skill, the side effect. When you burrow damaged roaches in a battle while injecting and spending larvae or sending your queen to your ramp when hellions came while also sending your drones at your expo to your main and also not fucking up your build order and macro, this is of course reflected in your apm.
If you look at the replay, you see your apm as 150+ at an instant when you inject your hatcheries, spread your creep tumors, spend your larvae, poke the front of your opponent and pull your lings when marines fire at them and send 2 lings at each xel'naga tower (2nd ling is your friend when there is a marine at the tower). Your high apm is not the reason, but the result of it.
Yeah, early game apm doesn't matter that much. Yes, it does to some extent, but it only helps you get zergling speed 1-2 seconds faster or 1-2 seconds faster expansion hatchery, that's it. It can easily be neglected in the further part of the game.
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Also, APM spamming is a good warmup.
I play guitar, and if I'm about to binge on SC2 ladder or play some custom 1v1s or even team games, I actually like to play a few scales. It warms up my hands and gets my left hand working much better (I am right-handed). Also, a lot of people talk about rhythm in an SC2 game and I definitely believe that rhythm is a big part of keeping yourself going at a constant rate and returning to doing "the most normal thing in the world" (day9 quote for ya!), and doing scales helps me a lot with that too. I have some pretty weird practice methods though. Usually when I recommend them to people, they either don't want to do them or try them and find them useless. But hey, it works for me, so I'mma keep doin' it.
APM spam definitely has its uses, but in my experience, skill yields high APM (in terms of actually utilized APM), but high APM does not yield skill.
You can't do 2 things at once, right? So the way I see it, APM is the result of shoving actions as close together as possible, and that's one of the reasons games like SC2 have no real skill ceiling -- skill would only theoretically cap when a player can do multiple actions simultaneously (example: executing stop-shoot marine micro against banelings while building workers, dropping mules, building a command center, building units, and starting upgrades precisely simultaneously). Since such a feat is physically not possible, a player can get infinitely closer to a 0 second delay between actions (which would result in an incalculably high APM). So APM is mostly just a measurement of how close you can get to simultaneous actions without ever actually achieving it. Obviously speed is just one factor in skill, so the way I figure, APM is a product of one aspect of the game. In other words, It's completely superficial.
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Don't tell me how to think!
This is thoughtcrime!
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On December 22 2010 01:12 Zergneedsfood wrote:
Don't tell me how to think!
This is thoughtcrime!
If you don't want me to tell you how to think, you really just have the one option:
Click faster!
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On December 22 2010 01:21 Seltsam wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2010 01:12 Zergneedsfood wrote:
Don't tell me how to think!
This is thoughtcrime! If you don't want me to tell you how to think, you really just have the one option: Click faster!
Wait....................
You lost me there. I'm already known for overspamming. :D
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On December 22 2010 01:27 Zergneedsfood wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2010 01:21 Seltsam wrote:On December 22 2010 01:12 Zergneedsfood wrote:
Don't tell me how to think!
This is thoughtcrime! If you don't want me to tell you how to think, you really just have the one option: Click faster! Wait.................... You lost me there. I'm already known for overspamming. :D
No! APM is everything.
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APM is a reliable way of looking at your own improvement (because you can be honest about where you're spending your APM and other issues with your game). It's not a reliable measure of another person's skill. I wouldn't even go so far as to say it reflects another person's skill at all. Low APM is an issue at the high levels, but high APM players exist at all levels of the ladder. In other words you can tell a person sucks if they have 40 APM, but you can't tell if a person is good if they have 250 APM. The latter only tells you that they've been playing long enough to spam... IE: They aren't b.net noob bad, but that's all you eliminate. They can still be from D-A and thus it's not really useful. Likewise, 150 APM is still enough for A level play.
PS: The OP is completely redundant if you just do a search on APM. I'm putting the argument into the context of 2010, but you will find just about every argument that can be made about APM in a simple search. The farther back you go the more people will talk about FishEYE lol.
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When i started seriously playing SC2 on release, my APM was dismal, like around 20 in game APM.
Since, it's gone up to about 80ish, spiking to 200 in battles/macro/dealing with ???? situations.
So I've improved, to be sure, my play has tightened and I can measure it to a small extent on how my apm is improving. It's kinda plateaued at this point, but it's making increases slowly as I practice more.
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EPT
