I have been playing sc for like 5 or 6 years now. I know apm is suposed to not matter and i could reach pretty decent rank ( B-) with only 130/150 apm. Also i beat several times highers ranks than this even if it was traning games. Still i'm totally unable to make a 10 minute game with 200 apm. I mean even if i spam like mad and if my life depended of it I FUCKING CANT REACH 200 APM. When I watch bwhcart early season it's always the same , 90 % of my games i have lower apm than the guys i beat, sometimes some hardcore noobs have like 250 apm. But i repeat again, even if i try to break my 150 apm limit i have never been able to break 200 apm even with hardcore spaming. You could say " practice more" but i have been practising sc A LOT during the past years ( some weeks up to 10 h / days whole week). This is not like if i sucked and could find the reason. As i said i 'm really ok / decent player but with this low apm i will always be limited to B- rank. WHy? i will explain you why apm matters with some eq:
1) Yesterday on Longinus, i'm terran vs P . I Fasr expanded , made a perfect split , spent all my money while constantly producing units from 4 facts , always producing scv and making depot in the right timing . There was nearly nothing better i could do. But happens a critiqal situation : i have about 100/200 pop and i just finished my third expansions : now I ll have to go out , set a defense for my third expansions WHICH MEANS a lot of things to do and think during a very litle moment: 1) scout where his troops are : i dont want to be flanked /raped just wheni open my wall and my units go out in line. 2) after scooting think to the best unit placement considering where he his and how much he has. 3) Check my first upgrade (+1 is nearly finished) 4) build 2 more depots 5) lay mines 6) send a litle group of vulture to harass somewhere AND lay some means for my defense to spend some if i would lose theses vulure. 7) check any hidden tech with scan ( carriers , arbiters) 8 ) Changing the f ucking rally points to somewhere near my third. 9) Add 2 more factories 10) Make turets 11) start 4 th expansion ( double gas at 5 on longinus)
So with my 130/150 apm i have to deal with 11 important things in less than 5 seconds with the threaten of being crushed. I'm not enough faster and i 'll tell you what hapened and how i lost.
1)i scouted and saw he had about 2 groups of goons + 1 shutle , i group at each big choke on longinus ( spot at 6) so he could deny every vulture harrass and sandwich me.
2) my unit placement was in fact randomly made cause i saw him moving a bit and i was paniced. 3) its why i forogot to check my upgrade. 4)Bumb its why i forgot also my depot 5)i layed mines in a shitty way , sometimes under my tanks cause i wanted to lay fastly as much mean asi could. 6) Only one vulture survived from my ' vulture harasment " idea.great. 7) i did not use my scan to check tech 8) I focused more on changing the rally points which in fact is quite stupid whenever i could not have been able to secure outside near my third i would have rally vulture and tanks on his troops lol 9)i added factories but their placement was just horrible : later it would have bug my others factories rally point 10) The big mistake : i was not enough fast to make all theses things and put turets : its how i lost he had 2 shutles with 4 zel each , he sent all his troops and some zealots exploded in mines and in tanks. At the end i lost my third , nearly all my troops ( and the one with new rally points lol) By that time he had started carriers on his double gas expo at 2 , carriers than i would have scanned if i was faster. 11) ofc i never could take a 4th expo
This shows how apm matters , or at leastgaming speed or effcient apm , call it like u want whatever but if i had been faster , i would have properly lay my mines and put turets in right angles , i would have put my 2 depot and so , i mean with 100 more apm or so which means about 5/6 real and efficient actions. Howi know this ? Because when i play vs spamming noobs ; even if they do like 250 apm , their real apm is like 80 , which mean in fact they are slower than me and in theses situations i have always enough time to do calmly all theses listed things.
I ll put more exemples later. Any reason why i'm so slow after all this time?
people have been trying to figure out how to measure apm more effectively, that's why you see a lot of people who talk about eapm, which doesn't really solve the problem.
what you describe is multitasking. having decent apm has something to do with it, but a number alone doesn't make a valid statement about how good you are at it.
in the end apm doesn't really say anything about the quality of your game, it's all about the results you get, and that can be pretty nicely measured by your iccup rank because it takes a lot of games into account and is much more valid than "I beat [good player], I'm as good as him." If you're serious about faking being good though, you'll manage to manipulate your rank too (by dodging koreans or only 4-pooling for example).
Also my question was why can't i reach 200 apm with spaming ? It s like i was telling you i can't beat 100metters world record , i just -can't- even if i really try. maybe i'm too lazy?
oh man, i have exactly the same "problem". I'm a C+ player and the persons i play always have higher apm than me. i have about 120 :O but well im a protoss 1a2a3a
but anyway: the werid thing is: even if i TRY to have a higher apm by spamming (seriously i really just spam and even play worse because i just focus on the spamming) i can only reach about 170
Try to aim for just a bit higher than what you currently have. So if your 130, try and get 150 every game, and once you can get 150 every game, you try and get 170 etc...
This worked quite well for me, and I've been at around 200 for a while now, while only playing the game for 2 years.
Well I'm quite different. I only spam a little in the first minute of the game. Sometimes I just sit there and stare while my workers shuffle about. I don't like doing excess actions and don't really aim to have a high apm.
But I still manage to have around 180-200 apm in a normal game, if it's a short or especially intense game I can sometimes get close to 300.
The only way to get high, efficient apm is practice, practice, and practice. You want to get use to building quickly from a lot of factories, telling an scv to build a depot in the desired location should take a split second, running workers the moment you see a dot on the mini-map should feel completely natural, etc.
There's two different ways you can approach this:
1) Concentrate on doing everything you need to as fast as possible, not the stupid number at the end of the game. Don't artificially inflate your apm with spamming. Basically increasing the level of your play will result in higher apm, high apm will not (necessarily) result in more skill.
2) Try to play crazily fast, focusing mostly on building workers, units and not hitting your supply limit. Once you're use to doing this at a high speed then you start focusing on more things, scouting, timings, harassment, etc. You'll start of playing badly and losing a lot, but in return you'll have faster hands which you can convert into useful actions later.
I personally think the 1st method is better and will make you a much stronger player, but I've seen people who do very well using the 2nd method so it depends on the person I guess.
I don't know I just spam my ass off it kinds of warms me up I guess.
If I don't spam in the beginning my macro isn't as good.....and macro is my strong point (I'm D+ Terran / C- Toss but bad choices and horrible micro is what makes my rank low ^_^)
Honestly, I used to day that APM doesn't affect your skill much. And it doesn't. How you execute your plans though, especially at a higher level, you need APM. Obviously you don't always need 250+ APM like the progamers. What I've found APM helps for is: Simply doing things faster, such as macro, micro, etc. It helps with tiny things that make your timing for exact, i.e.sending peons to gas as soon as it finishes. Seeing drops, or your opponent's whereabouts.
About the last one, I'm like.. a C- 210-230 APM Z. This APM is WAY too high for what I really need to do, and I'm not even trying to spam. I find myself spamming unconsciously, but instead of dragging boxes, like telling things to mine/attack/move 100 times, or macroing 5 times in a row. But what I've noticed, is that I rarely get dropped unless I am distracted now. Just something to think about.
u need high apm to reach high ranks especially as terran , read again my exemple there are several critiqal situations, for every matchup i guess , where you really need to be very fast and the way you will deal theses situations can decide who will win/ lose on a long run.
oO I do not have such "problem". Somehow I utilize my actions and get like 230-240ish every game. Like few months ago I was spamming a lot and reached more than 300. :D Sometimes even 400 but I realized that this is not good to spam that much so I now use my 230. I feel I spend my actions nicely but I am not gosu - I have maaaaaany other flaws. For example: low amount of strategies, panicking in official games, stupid mistakes at PvT and many other things that will keep me from being good for quite some time.
On November 27 2008 22:08 MasterReY wrote: oh man, i have exactly the same "problem". I'm a C+ player and the persons i play always have higher apm than me. i have about 120 :O but well im a protoss 1a2a3a
but anyway: the werid thing is: even if i TRY to have a higher apm by spamming (seriously i really just spam and even play worse because i just focus on the spamming) i can only reach about 170
Are you regretting cheesing every game now?
OP: I know you say you're LIMITED to B- (you're not) with 130 APM, but I'd like to know what your actual rank is...
I was stuck at ~120 for a long time too. The reason is usually not your handspeed, it's the latency between actions. This means its a mental problem.
Hmm maybe, that wasnt clear enough. I'll elaborate a bit more. Low apm means you perform less actions in the same minute a higher apm guy performs more actions. Or differently said, you perform the same actions in a longer time than a high apm guy.
Unless you have bad hand-eye coordination, it's often not the action itself that takes longer than with an apm player, its the sequential act of multiple actions. With other words, it takes too long for your brain to prepare for the next action after the first has been completed.
Don't believe me? Look at your own words. You can split perfectly (which requires zero inter-action thinking, and high handspeed), but you have trouble doing multiple things midgame at the same speed you split.
The key to getting higher apm in your case isn't training 1a2a3a4a like mad to gain a couple of miliseconds, it's about being uberfocussed during the game. You need to think of your next action while you're performing the former. You need to have a queue of actions lined up in your brain, so you dont end up starting a depot and thinking about your next action for 0.1 second.
It's very hard to learn, and very hard to describe. I guess some people never really get past a certain APM barrier. Look at the pro's, they train HOURS a day and often cant make it past 250. Everyone should be able to get 250 though, with a nice amount of training.
So, in your next game, stop thinking "gotta get higher apm gotta get higher apm", but start thinking "after sending this scv to make a depot I'm gonna check how far my tanks is from being done, gonna make an scv at my natural expansion etc.."
On November 28 2008 00:47 axel wrote: u need high apm to reach high ranks especially as terran , read again my exemple there are several critiqal situations, for every matchup i guess , where you really need to be very fast and the way you will deal theses situations can decide who will win/ lose on a long run.
I almost quit reading your OP because of the awful writing. What I gather is that you confuse bad decision making with not having enough apm. You should post the replay you were talking about so that ppl can gauge whether you are correct on your theory or not.
I know a guy who reached C level as terran with only 110 apm and did so without dodging or playing low level players whom he could easily beat.
On November 27 2008 21:42 distant_voice wrote: people have been trying to figure out how to measure apm more effectively, that's why you see a lot of people who talk about eapm, which doesn't really solve the problem.
what you describe is multitasking. having decent apm has something to do with it, but a number alone doesn't make a valid statement about how good you are at it. in the end apm doesn't really say anything about the quality of your game, it's all about the results you get, and that can be pretty nicely measured by your iccup rank because it takes a lot of games into account and is much more valid than "I beat [good player], I'm as good as him."
EAPM does not solve the problem because the formula used to measure it is flawed. From what I understand about how it is measured, is that actions that are "doubles" and random selecting are dropped. What is left is the "EAPM".
I realised some time ago that effective multitasking revolves around properly allocating your actions by prioritising them. This epiphany came to me after I showed a B level friend an FPVOD I recorded of myself playing. His comments were not really helpful except for one thing he told me "sometimes you spam your scvs instead of macroing". I later started understanding exactly how much this meant when I saw how progamers played in their FPVODs (Xellos really good example).
What this means is that you avoid doing actions that are not needed at any given time replacing them with actions that are needed. For example, you do not move around or select your main force while you are not being attacked or attacking or setting up an attack, this is the time for base management. Sounds like common sense, right? Because it is. However, ppl do not always play by common sense and it is not always clear what "sensible" is at certain moments so ppl play with instinct.
My point is that merely dropping duplicate actions from the total apm and calling it Effective APM is only a small part of getting the true EAPM. Starcraft is also a game of incomplete information -- as a player, never know all the variables of the match you are playing (unless you are using maphack, perhaps) so writing a program that would put itself in each player's shoes, analyse his situation during each minute and decide on what the optimal action is would be extremely difficult, I am guessing.
What are the chances of someone writing an AI that would analyse replay files?
If you're serious about faking being good though, you'll manage to manipulate your rank too (by dodging koreans or only 4-pooling for example).
i think you pointed my real problem, when i was younger i was left handed and was forced to become right handed. This caused me some troubles , especially for playing piano or others things which requires 2 hands. I have always been very weak at doing it, it's like my brain is freezing during a lil second everytime i have to execute things with my 2 hands coordinated. I dont know how to solve it .
On November 28 2008 01:48 RaGe wrote: I was stuck at ~120 for a long time too. The reason is usually not your handspeed, it's the latency between actions. This means its a mental problem.
Hmm maybe, that wasnt clear enough. I'll elaborate a bit more. Low apm means you perform less actions in the same minute a higher apm guy performs more actions. Or differently said, you perform the same actions in a longer time than a high apm guy.
Unless you have bad hand-eye coordination, it's often not the action itself that takes longer than with an apm player, its the sequential act of multiple actions. With other words, it takes too long for your brain to prepare for the next action after the first has been completed.
Don't believe me? Look at your own words. You can split perfectly (which requires zero inter-action thinking, and high handspeed), but you have trouble doing multiple things midgame at the same speed you split.
The key to getting higher apm in your case isn't training 1a2a3a4a like mad to gain a couple of miliseconds, it's about being uberfocussed during the game. You need to think of your next action while you're performing the former. You need to have a queue of actions lined up in your brain, so you dont end up starting a depot and thinking about your next action for 0.1 second.
It's very hard to learn, and very hard to describe. I guess some people never really get past a certain APM barrier. Look at the pro's, they train HOURS a day and often cant make it past 250. Everyone should be able to get 250 though, with a nice amount of training.
So, in your next game, stop thinking "gotta get higher apm gotta get higher apm", but start thinking "after sending this scv to make a depot I'm gonna check how far my tanks is from being done, gonna make an scv at my natural expansion etc.."
o.o I asked a question I wasn't that concerned with proof... When I said you're not limited to B- with 130 APM... I just mean people like Fisheye are probably capable of getting to A rank with low APM.
EPT
1a2a3a
