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Disclaimer: I've been reading a couple blogs lately, and I've been reading their comments. So I'd like to point out that this is also a blog and avoid pointless arguments, let me assure you that I realize that this is my opinion. So for anyone who's tempted to post replies wherein you call me an idiot or whatever, let me remind you that being opinionated in a blog is not exactly unorthodox. Yeesh.
I've seen a lot of threads about APM. People are asking "how do I increase my APM!?" and whatnot. Most of the answers revolve around "practice more" or "don't worry about APM." These statements are both true, but I think people are missing the point. APM is a lot more important than some people seem to realize (or be willing to admit), but a lot less important than those asking how to improve it seem to realize (or be willing to admit).
Guys, APM is actually a very important thing to have. However, it's not something to strive for.
Let me ask you to do something before I make my point.
First, I want you to hit some keys as quickly as you can.
Seriously. Try it! I'll wait.
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Okay, now hit the D and S keys as quickly as you can. Go ahead.
Really. I'll wait again.
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Which was faster? My guess is (unless you're just not very familiar with a keyboard) the second one. Because it's not about physical speed. Actually hitting 200 APM takes very little physical dexterity, and even if you physically can't do that, you can gain that dexterity pretty easily just by pressing lots of buttons.
APM is an side effect of skill. Once you know exactly what you want to do next, and you're always thinking about your next set of actions, you'll be able to hit those keys like no tomorrow.
Now here's the kicker:
spamming in practice might actually be helpful!
Admittedly, it's not necessarily good for everyone, but I was messing around against some AI components the other day, and I was bored, so I decided to just spam a bunch of APM. Oddly enough, I started to force myself to keep up on my macro better and even though I felt like I was sort of faking it, when I watched the replay, I realized that my unit production had actually been kicked up a lot, and I managed to keep up on micro.
I dunno. APM is the most pointless, useless thing in the world. It's a superficial side-effect of being able to constantly think ahead. It's just a symptom of skill.
But damned if it's not an awesome practice tool.
 
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If you want to raise your APM, you don't just "spam" - you think about how you could be doing more stuff. More stuff done = more apm. Can you constantly look back to your army / poke your army around / harass with small groups of units / time tech and other buildings perfectly / keep up with macro?
That's how I've always thought of it. APM is an indicator of how much you are able to do in-game, meaning it is an indicator of skill (not the only one of course).
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I haven't read entire post but.
The way i created my mechanics, is by thinking what actions i need to do .
And how can i do this with the least amount of button & mouse pressing possible .
most obvious example is : putting all my lings in 1 control group, instead of selecting them individual and telling them to attack oO .
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On December 21 2010 14:05 synapse wrote:
If you want to raise your APM, you don't just "spam" - you think about how you could be doing more stuff. More stuff done = more apm. Can you constantly look back to your army / poke your army around / harass with small groups of units / time tech and other buildings perfectly / keep up with macro?
That's how I've always thought of it. APM is an indicator of how much you are able to do in-game, meaning it is an indicator of skill (not the only one of course).
If APM was an indicator of skill, then the player with the higher apm with respect to their race would win every game.
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On December 21 2010 14:55 tryummm wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 14:05 synapse wrote:
If you want to raise your APM, you don't just "spam" - you think about how you could be doing more stuff. More stuff done = more apm. Can you constantly look back to your army / poke your army around / harass with small groups of units / time tech and other buildings perfectly / keep up with macro?
That's how I've always thought of it. APM is an indicator of how much you are able to do in-game, meaning it is an indicator of skill (not the only one of course). If APM was an indicator of skill, then the player with the higher apm with respect to their race would win every game.
He said it's "an" indicator, not the only one. Because of that you can't just assume the player with the better APM is going win every game
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On December 21 2010 14:55 tryummm wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 14:05 synapse wrote:
If you want to raise your APM, you don't just "spam" - you think about how you could be doing more stuff. More stuff done = more apm. Can you constantly look back to your army / poke your army around / harass with small groups of units / time tech and other buildings perfectly / keep up with macro?
That's how I've always thought of it. APM is an indicator of how much you are able to do in-game, meaning it is an indicator of skill (not the only one of course). If APM was an indicator of skill, then the player with the higher apm with respect to their race would win every game.
1. Skill != win.
2. Did you even read my post? APM is an indicator of skill. I even said that it wasn't the only one.
3. Player 1 has 200 legit APM. Player 2 has 100 legit APM. If you need to pick one player to win, with your life depending on it, who do you pick?
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if you don't think APM matters you either don't understand what APM actually is, or you're too slow to know what a difference playing fast can make. actual APM is not a symptom of skill, it's a measurement of it. your current APM is the stat that actually matters, and it only begins to matter once you actually have things to do.
most people massively inflate the average APM, for example clicking over 300 in the beginning and then playing at 150 as their actual current APM, evening out the average APM number to low-mid 200 when they actually play almost 100 APM slower. others deflate it, having 0 APM for periods of time early on because there is literally no worthwhile action to make, and so they don't make one, even though they're playing as fast as is realistically possible to play if you only made useful actions. then they end up with like 100 APM on average when for a large portion of the game they play consistently over 100.
if you want to know someone's actual average APM, watch their current APM while they just macro, and then watch their current APM while they are harassing or are in a battle. that is their true min-max.
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I agree with the general assessment that it's about knowing what you're hitting that's important first and foremost. However, muscle memory can be huge in a case such as this, so I thing spamming is fine. It's also very soothing early on if there's any nerves.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
Here's how I viewed APM when I was bad. Having high APM was a gateway, not a guarantee, to playing better. Without high APM there is no way I would be able to have the necessary fundamentals to be able to play SC at a decent level. Indeed when I picked up SC2 it actually didn't matter what I made because my handspeed was better than the vast majority of other players so that I would just massively outplay them. After awhile the strategy side of things came together, but really, genuinely having high APM is a useful skill to have - and you're not going to get that without training for it.
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On December 21 2010 15:33 Plexa wrote:
Here's how I viewed APM when I was bad. Having high APM was a gateway, not a guarantee, to playing better. Without high APM there is no way I would be able to have the necessary fundamentals to be able to play SC at a decent level. Indeed when I picked up SC2 it actually didn't matter what I made because my handspeed was better than the vast majority of other players so that I would just massively outplay them. After awhile the strategy side of things came together, but really, genuinely having high APM is a useful skill to have - and you're not going to get that without training for it.
Yeah these are pretty well my thoughts too. You can't just learn to spam to get high APM to enter that gateway though. If you don't have the mechanics and aren't able to analyze play whatsoever you've just entered the gateway to nowhere. Kind of like one of those failed proxy gates where your zealots spawn stuck and your opponent just laughs at you.
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to me it's just a matter of the chicken or the egg argument. does apm come first before mechanics or vice versa. at first i thought one would need to play fast, to accumulate speed and grow accustomed to playing at an artificial pace. But the more I think about it, I think APM just comes with practicing the same situation over and over.
to me, it's not enough to simply do something fast. It's more important to know what to do NEXT after a certain action is taken. The transition from one action, or rather a set of actions, to the next, is what creates both high APM and accuracy. This is why the sort of mechanics you see from progamers along with their 300+ APM is completely different from the amateur player with the same APM.
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United States43545 Posts
The vast majority of people need to use the actions they have better rather than focus on increasing the number. There isn't really that much to do in most games, only a minority go to a mass base, harassment, macro, 200/200 clashing lategame. In sc2 there's even less to do too, you can play while semi afk. Obviously at the very highest levels being faster will edge you ahead because you're both so perfectly mirrored in other respects but starcraft isn't all that demanding. If you can't macro well and micro decently on 120 or so then you're wasting your actions somewhere.
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My awareness of the game is greatly improved when I'm playing with higher APM. My bases and army are being scanned by my eyes constantly, and I notice drops and surprise attacks much quicker. It's silly to think that playing faster could actually be a bad thing, unless it's taken in the context of making you physically exhausted.
Take a reaver drop, for example. You catch it on the minimap just as it's entering your main, and with higher APM, you're quickly moving all of your peons away without suffering major losses. If your APM were lower in that situation, it might have just ended the game for you.
Something to think about...
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United States43545 Posts
On December 21 2010 16:24 BruceLee6783 wrote:
My awareness of the game is greatly improved when I'm playing with higher APM. My bases and army are being scanned by my eyes constantly, and I notice drops and surprise attacks much quicker. It's silly to think that playing faster could actually be a bad thing, unless it's taken in the context of making you physically exhausted.
Take a reaver drop, for example. You catch it on the minimap just as it's entering your main, and with higher APM, you're quickly moving all of your peons away without suffering major losses. If your APM were lower in that situation, it might have just ended the game for you.
Something to think about...
f3 ctrl click f4 right click
Who can't do that?
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On December 21 2010 16:28 KwarK wrote:
f3 ctrl click f4 right click
Who can't do that?
People without fingers. Or toes.
Seriously, for some that may take half a second. For others, it may take a full 5 seconds. Big difference. Lower APM players may never even notice the drop at all until all workers are dead, simply because they were microing an attack on the opponents main.
It's not so simple as to "duh just ctrl click ur scvs away".
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Lately I always use the same analogy in these threads.
APM is what physical strength is in classical sports. You can bench press and squat 200KG and suck ass in basketball, but you can bet that almost all top NBA players can bench as much if not higher.
Also, you can have the best technique in basketball, but if you're slow and weak, you'll get nowhere near top level.
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Braavos36390 Posts
On December 21 2010 17:15 niteReloaded wrote:
Lately I always use the same analogy in these threads.
APM is what physical strength is in classical sports. You can bench press and squat 200KG and suck ass in basketball, but you can bet that almost all top NBA players can bench as much if not higher.
Also, you can have the best technique in basketball, but if you're slow and weak, you'll get nowhere near top level.
actually, contrary to popular belief NBA players can't bench a lot because a lot of them have really slight builds and long arms. lifting a lot of weights also screws up shooting and flexibility as well.
but yeah your analogy is pretty accurate
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i think theres multiple aspects to apm that improves your play
for one, better apm usually means you're going through macro cycles faster, which is always a good thing
and people say spam is useless... i will agree with that statement for very early game (ie spamming workers/command center before anything else is up).... but past that, i think spamming is helpful in the fact that it makes you aware of your surroundings on all fronts. say in tvp, if you are spamming between ur main/nat cc's for macro cycles while cycling through your harassing vultures, you will see incoming drops and dragoons trying to cut off your vultures faster, thus allowing you to minimize damage by reacting to opposition faster. sure, this can be done without spamming of course, but it's harder that way because your attention is focused on one screen for longer periods of time.
and in late game, better apm means you have better control of several groups of units at once, which is a huge factor in maximizing the power of your army imo.
and in terms of maximizing your units, better apm helps to have better micro... of course not in the sense that spamming will make you control your units better, but making better conscious use of your units through faster execution.
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On December 21 2010 16:53 BruceLee6783 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 16:28 KwarK wrote:
f3 ctrl click f4 right click
Who can't do that? People without fingers. Or toes. Seriously, for some that may take half a second. For others, it may take a full 5 seconds. Big difference. Lower APM players may never even notice the drop at all until all workers are dead, simply because they were microing an attack on the opponents main. It's not so simple as to "duh just ctrl click ur scvs away".
Exactly. And of course anyone can do it if they designate time to do it.
Good players will even try to distract you while dropping you. If you have 100 APM and you are in the middle of engaging in a battle - sieging tanks, laying mines, scanning units under arbiter, etc - and you notice a storm drop on the map incoming you're going to take nearly twice as long to manage both those tasks than a player with 200 would take.
Another example is simply having to send recently finished workers to mine as your wave of units finishes from your production facilities.
Combine more and more things you have to do simultaneously as the game progresses and you start to fall behind physically.
edit: of course I'm referring to the relativity of EAPM and not APM. 180APM(100EAPM) vs 140APM(100EAPM) isn't going to favour 180 in the multitasking regard to be fair
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United States43545 Posts
On December 21 2010 16:53 BruceLee6783 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 16:28 KwarK wrote:
f3 ctrl click f4 right click
Who can't do that? People without fingers. Or toes. Seriously, for some that may take half a second. For others, it may take a full 5 seconds. Big difference. Lower APM players may never even notice the drop at all until all workers are dead, simply because they were microing an attack on the opponents main. It's not so simple as to "duh just ctrl click ur scvs away".
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.
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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
