Just now, I was watching iNcontroL's stream, and it got me thinking about this whole APM thing. Now, I don't mean to pick on iNcontroL specifically, because I love SotG, I'm super psyched for NASL, and overall I really enjoy what he brings to SC2. The reason I brought him up is because he has the infamous super-loud keyboard, so it is really easy to hear the "clickity-clack" of the keyboard.
Specifically, it was during the game he just played against ROOTCatz, where I really noticed this issue: at the beginning of the game, you can hear him spamming to an incredible degree, probably somewhere up and around 300-350 APM. Then, at 9, he went to build his pylon, and all of the sudden you heard….nothing….while the probe was on it's way out to build. As soon as it built the pylon, and was heading back to the mineral patch, you heard the insane "clickity-clack" of the keyboard and mouse again. Again, at 12/13, for the gateway, as well as scouting, immediately it dropped to almost nothing. This is even more pronounced during a VoD of him coaching someone, where both have loud, mechanical keyboards, and you can hear them both going NUTS, up until the game starts to pick up, and then it just dies down, on both sides.
That thought took me to what we hear Tastosis tell us at least once every GSL. They always bring up the player's APM's, and how that is one of the biggest difference between high-level Masters players, mid to low level Masters players, Diamond players, and so forth. They state APM as one of the main, dividing differences. Yet, if you watch any stream, or watch any player play, they always spam like CRAZY at the beginning, beyond all belief, just to slow it down when the game actually picks up (past the 18-supply mark, I would say).
I know what Day[9] said, in one of his dailies a while back, that the players are doing this to warm up for the rest of the game, where the APM is required of them, but…I just find that a little bit hard to believe, especially if they are playing back-to-back ladder games, or something like that. Why would they need to warm up at the beginning of EVERY game? Wouldn't they already be "warmed up" by the middle of the first game?
That thought took me to my next thought, which was exactly how much APM a pro is doing, and what that actually means to someone like me. Let's use the easy example, and say that someone is playing with 300 APM. APM = Actions Per Minute, and if we divide the minute out (divide by 60, to bring it to seconds), this calculates to 5 actions every SECOND. Tastosis is always quick to remind us that this APM is not 100% accurate, as "real-life" APM is some percentage higher (they say anywhere from 25%-40% higher, depending on the day). THis means that they are performing 5-8 actions EVERY SINGLE SECOND.
I think we actually need to take a look at that, analytically. Let's take a middle ground of 6 actions a second, just for fun. I want you to find your nearest stopwatch, time just ONE second, and then attempt to think of 6 different things. I bet that you cannot. I just tried, and it came out as something along the lines of "STARWA-LORDOFTH-SUPERMA-PIZ-MOU-ST" some completely random, mashed up thought, that had absolutely no meaning to me. In reality, I seriously doubt if any of us reading this post are even reading at 6 WORDS a second, much less processing the information coherently. Continue with this stopwatch example, and I dare you to find a replay of yours where you did SIX THINGS in ONE SECOND. Not 6 clicks on "build probe-build probe-build probe-build probe…blah blah blah", as this does not count. I want to see six individual things done, in the course of one second. We will continue with this thought process a bit later on.
As I continued to watch iNcontroL's stream, when the action started to pick up, his keyboard "clickity-clack" sounded to be about 1/3 of what it was before, which would (estimating) put his APM somewhere in the ballpark of 100 APM, or just over 1 1/2 actions a second. This seems like a MUCH more feasible thing to do. 1 1/2 thoughts, 1 1/2 words, 1 1/2 actions in a second is not an unreachable number, nor is it hard to believe.
So, why do we glorify APM so much, when it seems that 66% (ish) of it is completely spamy, meaningless clicks?
Also, why do we even CARE about APM so much? I have also heard Tastosis say things like "well, he really can't win, because his APM isn't even half of what the other guy's is". I dunno about that…wouldn't it be more beneficial to work on having EXACT commands and keystrokes, instead of mashing? To be able to have 60 APM (that's exactly 1 action every second, without fault) but to have each and every click/button press mean something….wouldn't that be more desired?
ARGUMENTS: Before even posting this, I can 'sense' the arguments that would be coming this way, so I want to talk about a few that I bet will come up.
1- "But Fubsy, I really DO have 300 APM in the middle of a game, because I'm macro-ing while I'm in a battle" While watching replays and streams, I notice that the players DO macro, but not to the extent of 300 APM. Most of the time, they watch the battle, maybe micro some units if necessary, and do ONE macro thing, like expand, build gateways, or warp in a round of units. If you REALLY had 300 APM while in a battle, we should expect to see something along the lines of: Battle Starts - Engage - Build Marine - Build Tank - Build SCV - Build Sensor Tower - Expand - Pull back part of wounded army … in one second. And then the next second, six more things. And the next second, six more things. In an engagement of 15 seconds, I would expect 90 things to have happened, and I would like to see a REPLAY or a VOD of this happening.
2- "If APM isn't so important, then why do we never see someone winning with low APM?" This argument is basically trying to say "People who win have high APM, people who don't win have low APM, so that means you must have hi APM to win" My argument would simply be that it is the same reason that you always see the players type "GG" when they leave. It started with a group of people, 10-12 years ago, who started doing what would later become a standard for the entire community. I guarantee that if you were to take someone like NesTea, and before he EVER started playing SC:BW and SC2, put him in his own world where no one had even heard of key spamming, or boosting APM (or APM at all, for that matter) he would have exactly the same skill that he has today, but his APM would be somewhere around 60-100, not this amazing 350-400 that we see today. Too much of it is simply habit, picked up from watching others who are better than us do it. I would daresay that is exactly why most/all of you do it, because you saw other people do it, and picked it up. And if I had to guess, I would say that it felt "weird" at first, and a little bit uncomfortable and/or like it was wasteful. But now we all do it.
3- "You're just jealous cause you don't have high APM" <(^_^<) (>^_^)>
4- "Fubsy, I just don't care" then....I guess you win!
On March 05 2011 19:34 Mailing wrote: And only lower level players 'glorify' APM.
I would say that if you watch any GSL/IEM/MLG, the commentators really talk up the players APM, and I wouldn't count any of them as "lower level players"
It's "warm-up" in a sense that it gets a player's hand loose and going during the game.
Some players I know just spam because they feel like their handspeed slows down if they don't "warm-up" like that in the beginning. It's a preference/habit thing, not "I have 300 apm so I'm better than you" thing.
they don't know how to use it now, but eventually when the game gets more figured out and everyone knows exactly what to do, the will be using all 300 apm like in sc1
Idra averaged about 170 in his recent games in IEM, so we'll go off of that. Whitera has played as low as 100 in some of his best games.
That whole warming up for mid-game thing is true for some players, but for most people ,yeah, it's just a habit to spam workers in the beginning.
And you're right, I remember when I was new I watched streams and always saw people spamming workers. I started only to learn it was pretty pointless for the level I play at. But it's a solid habit I have a hard time breaking. But really, it doesn't matter. There's nothing else happening in that period.
On March 05 2011 19:34 Mailing wrote: And only lower level players 'glorify' APM.
I would say that if you watch any GSL/IEM/MLG, the commentators really talk up the players APM, and I wouldn't count any of them as "lower level players"
The commentators are just trying to generate more interest in the matches, and find something to talk about in the dull moments when a game is getting going and nothing is happening at all.
wow sorry but there are actual reasons to "spam" in the beginning, and having a good APM mid or late game is at least helpful. Please try using the search function next time to do a little research!
People spam apm because it feels comfortable when you're used to do it. It also feels more natural transitioning into a high APM mid-lategame if you have your APM up at the start of the game, atleast that's how it works for me.
And did tasteless really say "well, he really can't win, because his APM isn't even half of what the other guy's is" ? I strongly doubt that, and even if he did say i think the was just joking around.
And a player with low apm is by definition not a bad player, I remember some time ago where minigun was playing sub 100 apm agaisnt the very best on the NA ladder.
On March 05 2011 19:39 TheNessman wrote: wow sorry but there are actual reasons to "spam" in the beginning, and having a good APM mid or late game is at least helpful. Please try using the search function next time to do a little research!
umm.....I guess I shouldn't feed the trolls, but did you actually read the post? My issue is not whether or not higher APM could help in mid/late game, but whether or not we actually USE the APM that we say that we have.
On March 05 2011 19:31 FubsyGamr wrote: I think we actually need to take a look at that, analytically. Let's take a middle ground of 6 actions a second, just for fun. I want you to find your nearest stopwatch, time just ONE second, and then attempt to think of 6 different things. I bet that you cannot. I just tried, and it came out as something along the lines of "STARWA-LORDOFTH-SUPERMA-PIZ-MOU-ST" some completely random, mashed up thought, that had absolutely no meaning to me. In reality, I seriously doubt if any of us reading this post are even reading at 6 WORDS a second, much less processing the information coherently. Continue with this stopwatch example, and I dare you to find a replay of yours where you did SIX THINGS in ONE SECOND. Not 6 clicks on "build probe-build probe-build probe-build probe…blah blah blah", as this does not count. I want to see six individual things done, in the course of one second. We will continue with this thought process a bit later on.
I don't think you can compare these two situations Ideally you don't have to think about your actions, it's more like an instinct when you execute
Look at FPS for example, there is NO WAY you think about what you have to do first when you hit that split second rail shot in QL or an awp hit in CS. You just do it and ultimatly it all comes down to lots of training. And it is very well possible to execute 5 usefull actions per second on a keyboard, just type a text and you'll see (If you type fast with 10 fingers at least)
I do agree that looking at APM is somewhat meaningless in RTS though, because (often) most of it is just spam and doesn't trigger any action, in most shooters this doesn't apply.
I personally spam at start to warm of fingers and get a sense of what movement my hands need to do to press a specific key fast. And if I dont spam, I feel like im not in the best "shape" to play macro games.
honestly you SOUND like you have low apm and trying to rationalize that it isn't important.
1.) a player with higher apm generally is better at starcraft, PERIOD. This is a fact, if you gather the average apm between bronze vs gold, you will get thish result, diamond vs masters, masters vs players @ gsl / notable tournaments. YOU WILL see that as people get better their apm goes higher. 2.) a player spams simply because he wants to get used to tapping his keys. I want to be able to press 1 withou even know i almost pressed 1, i spam it so much that it becomes instinctive. its rather stupid to say this is bad, as it can only improve your muscle memory. So what if your apm actually dies down? That has nothing to do with the benefits of spamming. 3.) low level players DO NOT glorify their apm. 99% of the low levels player have anything BUT high apm. 4.) Nobody is glorifying apm, you took a few tastosis lines and exploded it outa proportion as if apm=direct mesasure of sc ability when clearly they've said time again its not but its an indicator if no other evidence is available.
On March 05 2011 19:40 GhostFall wrote: yeah watching the gsl, I see players with 200-300 apm and I still see, almost every game, areas where pros could use more apm throughout the game.
But is it that they could use MORE apm? Or is it that they could have more EFFICIENT apm? Again, there is no way that they are doing 6 things every single second, and still can't do as much as they need to do.
On March 05 2011 19:43 VzO wrote: honestly you SOUND like you have low apm and trying to rationalize that it isn't important.
1.) a player with higher apm generally is better at starcraft, PERIOD. This is a fact, if you gather the average apm between bronze vs gold, you will get thish result, diamond vs masters, masters vs players @ gsl / notable tournaments. YOU WILL see that as people get better their apm goes higher. 2.) a player spams simply because he wants to get used to tapping his keys. I want to be able to press 1 withou even know i almost pressed 1, i spam it so much that it becomes instinctive. its rather stupid to say this is bad, as it can only improve your muscle memory. So what if your apm actually dies down? That has nothing to do with the benefits of spamming. 3.) low level players DO NOT glorify their apm. 99% of the low levels player have anything BUT high apm. 4.) Nobody is glorifying apm, you took a few tastosis lines and exploded it outa proportion as if apm=direct mesasure of sc ability when clearly they've said time again its not but its an indicator if no other evidence is available.
1) = WRONG, SjoW is one of the best Starcraft 2 players out there, And he has a average of 70 apm. Apm doesnt matter in sc2 yet because as of now, Its all about game understanding. 2)right 3)low level players glorify higher ranked players apm i think he meant. 4) low level players are still glorifiyng high level players. (used to myself)
Why? Think how many actions you must make to train like 12 stalkers. Now think to train 12 goons. You click a lot more or use a lot more hotkeys. Sure, sc2 you use too, but its less.
IMO high APM allows for better multi tasking. Look at NaDa, he plays with some of the highest APM out there. If you ever watch him in first person, you'll see he is exceptionally well at bouncing all over the map microing while still macroing as well. A player with low APM simply isn't equipped to handle all that action at once. A faster one on the other hand is.
On March 05 2011 19:40 GhostFall wrote: yeah watching the gsl, I see players with 200-300 apm and I still see, almost every game, areas where pros could use more apm throughout the game.
But is it that they could use MORE apm? Or is it that they could have more EFFICIENT apm? Again, there is no way that they are doing 6 things every single second, and still can't do as much as they need to do.
APM
EAPM
Early game spam
etc
listen, APM is needed because you need to get in the habit of "hurrying" your actions to get things done quicker and respond faster.
EAPM is when you actually get more and more comfortable with the interface and issuing commands, where they become more meaningful.
Early game spam is to wire your brain to hurry even at the start, it warms up your hands and makes it so you don't have to "speed up" as the game goes. It's sort of like a cold shower after just waking up.
Pros need quick hands because it's just another way to be "better". With that said anything over 150 apm is fine for 90% of SC2 situations right now, but having 350 doesnt hurt. APM is just the only measurement we have for "multitasking and quickness of actions". It's not entirely accurate but gives a good overview.
As sc2 becomes more competitive and stops being garbage due to maps and bad balance it will become more important.
On March 05 2011 19:40 Alpina wrote: Spamming helps you improve your speed in the long run. At first that is useless clicks but later they becomes useful click.
I think if you never spam and don't try to improve your apm, you will not be fast even when you are really good.
This is a common misconception. Just because one spams actions and/or action groups doesn't mean they are actually developing "useful" APM. They may NEVER fill useless actions with useful ones. Useful APM will come with practice and need. If there is never a need for you to use 400 APM, you will never find a use for the 400 APM even if you CAN do it. The only benefit it has is that it builds endurance. If there are times where you have long bouts of high APM requirements, you can become tired. People who spam are less likely to get tired in those (rare) circumstances.
All that being said, there are a few top level players considered "slow" because they don't spam. At intense points in the game, you will see their APM skyrocket to the same level of their spamming peers. However, their average (real) APM is probably in the mid to high 100s. IIRC, sjow is one of those players.
On March 05 2011 19:40 GhostFall wrote: yeah watching the gsl, I see players with 200-300 apm and I still see, almost every game, areas where pros could use more apm throughout the game.
But is it that they could use MORE apm? Or is it that they could have more EFFICIENT apm? Again, there is no way that they are doing 6 things every single second, and still can't do as much as they need to do.
... are you serious ... You should watch some FPVODs :z
If APM wasnt important you wouldnt see constant rise of APM thorough the course of time. See Jaedong`s FPvod I linked, maybe his APM isnt 100% effective, but a damn good part of it is.
You say that even with 300 APM players cannot macro to the fullest, thats quite an argument in favour to not against it. If a lower level players are spamming APM and boosting about it that shouldnt concern you.
On March 05 2011 19:43 VzO wrote: honestly you SOUND like you have low apm and trying to rationalize that it isn't important.
1.) a player with higher apm generally is better at starcraft, PERIOD. This is a fact, if you gather the average apm between bronze vs gold, you will get thish result, diamond vs masters, masters vs players @ gsl / notable tournaments. YOU WILL see that as people get better their apm goes higher. 2.) a player spams simply because he wants to get used to tapping his keys. I want to be able to press 1 withou even know i almost pressed 1, i spam it so much that it becomes instinctive. its rather stupid to say this is bad, as it can only improve your muscle memory. So what if your apm actually dies down? That has nothing to do with the benefits of spamming. 3.) low level players DO NOT glorify their apm. 99% of the low levels player have anything BUT high apm. 4.) Nobody is glorifying apm, you took a few tastosis lines and exploded it outa proportion as if apm=direct mesasure of sc ability when clearly they've said time again its not but its an indicator if no other evidence is available.
1) = WRONG, SjoW is one of the best Starcraft 2 players out there, And he has a average of 70 apm. Apm doesnt matter in sc2 yet because as of now, Its all about game understanding.
Very silly statement. Apm matters and a lot.
You want to say that Sjow has 70avg apm on long macro game? Well then the only explanation is that he is playing terran; I can't imagine someone playing with 70 apm at high level.
On March 05 2011 19:43 VzO wrote: honestly you SOUND like you have low apm and trying to rationalize that it isn't important.
1.) a player with higher apm generally is better at starcraft, PERIOD. This is a fact, if you gather the average apm between bronze vs gold, you will get thish result, diamond vs masters, masters vs players @ gsl / notable tournaments. YOU WILL see that as people get better their apm goes higher. 2.) a player spams simply because he wants to get used to tapping his keys. I want to be able to press 1 withou even know i almost pressed 1, i spam it so much that it becomes instinctive. its rather stupid to say this is bad, as it can only improve your muscle memory. So what if your apm actually dies down? That has nothing to do with the benefits of spamming. 3.) low level players DO NOT glorify their apm. 99% of the low levels player have anything BUT high apm. 4.) Nobody is glorifying apm, you took a few tastosis lines and exploded it outa proportion as if apm=direct mesasure of sc ability when clearly they've said time again its not but its an indicator if no other evidence is available.
1) = WRONG, SjoW is one of the best Starcraft 2 players out there, And he has a average of 70 apm. Apm doesnt matter in sc2 yet because as of now, Its all about game understanding. 2)right 3)low level players glorify higher ranked players apm i think he meant. 4) low level players are still glorifiyng high level players. (used to myself)
1.) you didn't even read what i wrote, i wrote on average. of course i am sure there is some bronze newb that prob plays at 300apm spamning123 every half a second. I am talking about ON AVERAGE, sheesh 3.) When someone plays at 300apm and you play at 30, i see absolutely no reason not to look up to them, is that really glorifying? 4.) Well I am pretty sure you were part of the minority then.
One time, i took the liberty of counting how many actions were needed compared to what some pros used. They click 10 times for the probe to go build a pylon, or click their army let's say fast units on 1 slow on 2, (1,2,1,2) etc with their army standing completely safe doing nothing. This is most noticeable when they're in a hurry for something, and need it really fast, clicking about 10-20 times for a unit to go build something, as if clicking more made it go faster to the destination, where 1 click is enough.
Go check it for yourself. Most guys that have 300+ apm spam 3 to 5 times as much of their real apm. White Ra spams less than usual and he's at aprox 120. If i were to see the real apm of most top players it would be around 80-120.
On March 05 2011 19:40 GhostFall wrote: yeah watching the gsl, I see players with 200-300 apm and I still see, almost every game, areas where pros could use more apm throughout the game.
But is it that they could use MORE apm? Or is it that they could have more EFFICIENT apm? Again, there is no way that they are doing 6 things every single second, and still can't do as much as they need to do.
... are you serious ... You should watch some FPVODs :z
Again, I feel as though you did not my entire post (it was quite long, tbh), so I will reiterate a bit to you here.
I watch streams and replays all the time, and I have yet to see someone consistently performing 6 useful actions every single second. Sure, they might warp in 6 stalkers in a second, but the very NEXT second, they aren't doing 6 more actions just like that. And the next second, 6 more actions. In 10 seconds, 60 useful actions were performed? I have never, ever seen that.
I completely agree with the original post. APM spamming is really getting out of hand. And I've seen many people be late on their timings because they were busy spamming.
My average APM is around 100, and that pretty much allows you to do anything.
At the beginning of every match is the same for a few minutes.
Just like musicians who are trained to the highest levels can play much much much faster than i s usually required of them, a starcraft player has very high goals in mind, some impossible, aim for the stars right?
And it's also a warmup, yes. Both at the same time.
sure they talk about apm in casts. from time to time it's a) fun to talk about or b) you don't have anything else to talk about atm. for me its fun to see how fast palyers spam. and most of them spam so that they can keep their hands warm and use the apm in macro/micro later.
On March 05 2011 19:52 Apolo wrote: One time, i took the liberty of counting how many actions were needed compared to what some pros used. They click 10 times for the probe to go build a pylon, or click their army let's say fast units on 1 slow on 2, (1,2,1,2) etc with their army standing completely safe doing nothing. This is most noticeable when they're in a hurry for something, and need it really fast, clicking about 10-20 times for a unit to go build something, as if clicking more made it go faster to the destination, where 1 click is enough.
Go check it for yourself. Most guys that have 300+ apm spam 3 to 5 times as much of their real apm. White Ra spams less than usual and he's at aprox 120. If i were to see the real apm of most top players it would be around 80-120.
are you using American/European players as an example and which? Yes SC2 is not dependant on APM, but as the competition increases and winning with 2 marauders and 2 marines lowers, it becomes more important.
You have to know, SC2 is in its infancy, as the game develops and time passes mechanical skill becomes more important. Also stop using NA/EU as examples, they don't work anymore.
On March 05 2011 19:43 VzO wrote: honestly you SOUND like you have low apm and trying to rationalize that it isn't important.
1.) a player with higher apm generally is better at starcraft, PERIOD. This is a fact, if you gather the average apm between bronze vs gold, you will get thish result, diamond vs masters, masters vs players @ gsl / notable tournaments. YOU WILL see that as people get better their apm goes higher. 2.) a player spams simply because he wants to get used to tapping his keys. I want to be able to press 1 withou even know i almost pressed 1, i spam it so much that it becomes instinctive. its rather stupid to say this is bad, as it can only improve your muscle memory. So what if your apm actually dies down? That has nothing to do with the benefits of spamming. 3.) low level players DO NOT glorify their apm. 99% of the low levels player have anything BUT high apm. 4.) Nobody is glorifying apm, you took a few tastosis lines and exploded it outa proportion as if apm=direct mesasure of sc ability when clearly they've said time again its not but its an indicator if no other evidence is available.
1) = WRONG, SjoW is one of the best Starcraft 2 players out there, And he has a average of 70 apm. Apm doesnt matter in sc2 yet because as of now, Its all about game understanding.
Very silly statement. Apm matters and a lot.
You want to say that Sjow has 70avg apm on long macro game? Well then the only explanation is that he is playing terran; I can't imagine someone playing with 70 apm at high level.
Well I agree the post wasnt as thought out as it should be, But fact is, Sjow (Even as playing zerg in practice) _Has about 50 Apm unless alot takes place. oGsTheStc in a long macro game on taldarim altar had 90 apm average. My only point(even tho very poorly said) was that you really dont need apm at all to be good at micro/macro. BUT, someone needs high apm to macro. And someone dont. Really nothing you can clear out in a thread. It depends on players/playstyle/skills etc
On March 05 2011 19:40 GhostFall wrote: yeah watching the gsl, I see players with 200-300 apm and I still see, almost every game, areas where pros could use more apm throughout the game.
But is it that they could use MORE apm? Or is it that they could have more EFFICIENT apm? Again, there is no way that they are doing 6 things every single second, and still can't do as much as they need to do.
... are you serious ... You should watch some FPVODs :z
Again, I feel as though you did not my entire post (it was quite long, tbh), so I will reiterate a bit to you here.
I watch streams and replays all the time, and I have yet to see someone consistently performing 6 useful actions every single second. Sure, they might warp in 6 stalkers in a second, but the very NEXT second, they aren't doing 6 more actions just like that. And the next second, 6 more actions. In 10 seconds, 60 useful actions were performed? I have never, ever seen that.
Exactly, noone has 100% efficiency, pros like Effort (EFFFFOOORT ;; ) and Nada had 400 APM, but 220-250 avg EAPM.They are still doing nearly 4 USEFUL actions per second. Do you expect everyone to do every action without an extra click or anything?
It's just a habit, and not a bad one for those situations where you really need 250+ apm I think. Still people like Sjow or WhiteRa do excellently with apm in the low to mid 100's, so I guess super high gosu apm is not that important in Starcraft 2. Maybe it will be in a few years, we'll see.
On March 05 2011 19:31 FubsyGamr wrote: I think we actually need to take a look at that, analytically. Let's take a middle ground of 6 actions a second, just for fun. I want you to find your nearest stopwatch, time just ONE second, and then attempt to think of 6 different things. I bet that you cannot. I just tried, and it came out as something along the lines of "STARWA-LORDOFTH-SUPERMA-PIZ-MOU-ST" some completely random, mashed up thought, that had absolutely no meaning to me. In reality, I seriously doubt if any of us reading this post are even reading at 6 WORDS a second, much less processing the information coherently. Continue with this stopwatch example, and I dare you to find a replay of yours where you did SIX THINGS in ONE SECOND. Not 6 clicks on "build probe-build probe-build probe-build probe…blah blah blah", as this does not count. I want to see six individual things done, in the course of one second. We will continue with this thought process a bit later on.
Not all actions equate to a completely different outcome. For instance, building a probe requires two actions: selecting the nexus, and starting the build. Building a building requires four, move the probe to the location, press 'b', select the building you want to place, and then place it on the ground.
As you were typing that massive wall of text, were you thinking about each individual letter you typed? I highly doubt it. You think about the finished product (in this case, each word.)
If APM wasnt important you wouldnt see constant rise of APM thorough the course of time. See Jaedong`s FPvod I linked, maybe his APM isnt 100% effective, but a damn good part of it is.
You say that even with 300 APM players cannot macro to the fullest, thats quite an argument in favour to not against it. If a lower level players are spamming APM and boosting about it that shouldnt concern you.
Wrong game. This isn't BW with 12 units per action group, 1 building per action group, retarded movement AI (granted, we still have some challenged AI at times), and workers that need babysitting. For the most part, a lot of the battles in SC2 can be left unattended for 1-2s after the initial engagement. Mixed with the ability to put an entire army on one action group as well as production facilities, along with smartcasting, there isn't the SAME need for high APM.
increasing your apm can only make you a better player... it's like working on cardio
also if this game ever gets any more difficult to play than it actually is (i.e. when expansions come out) the people with higher apm are gonna be quite a few steps ahead of the rest
On March 05 2011 19:52 Apolo wrote: One time, i took the liberty of counting how many actions were needed compared to what some pros used. They click 10 times for the probe to go build a pylon, or click their army let's say fast units on 1 slow on 2, (1,2,1,2) etc with their army standing completely safe doing nothing. This is most noticeable when they're in a hurry for something, and need it really fast, clicking about 10-20 times for a unit to go build something, as if clicking more made it go faster to the destination, where 1 click is enough.
Go check it for yourself. Most guys that have 300+ apm spam 3 to 5 times as much of their real apm. White Ra spams less than usual and he's at aprox 120. If i were to see the real apm of most top players it would be around 80-120.
are you using American/European players as an example and which? Yes SC2 is not dependant on APM, but as the competition increases and winning with 2 marauders and 2 marines lowers, it becomes more important.
You have to know, SC2 is in its infancy, as the game develops and time passes mechanical skill becomes more important. Also stop using NA/EU as examples, they don't work anymore.
How come NA/EU players cant be exampled? you do realise that koreans arent nr 1 in the world at sc2? Remember all the people who dont go to korea and play in the Gsl. If the Gsl was online so more ppl could join, im SURE that it would not have been a korean that had wun all seasons. im pretty sure that the top player in the world is korean. but top players in majority is not.
If APM wasnt important you wouldnt see constant rise of APM thorough the course of time. See Jaedong`s FPvod I linked, maybe his APM isnt 100% effective, but a damn good part of it is.
You say that even with 300 APM players cannot macro to the fullest, thats quite an argument in favour to not against it. If a lower level players are spamming APM and boosting about it that shouldnt concern you.
Wrong game. This isn't BW with 12 units per action group, 1 building per action group, retarded movement AI (granted, we still have some challenged AI at times), and workers that need babysitting. For the most part, a lot of the battles in SC2 can be left unattended for 1-2s after the initial engagement. Mixed with the ability to put an entire army on one action group as well as production facilities, along with smartcasting, there isn't the SAME need for high APM.
True APM is only shown in (conscious) multitasking occasions, otherwise its mindless (unconscious) spam. If you need to warm up your hands buy hand warmers.
On March 05 2011 19:52 Apolo wrote: One time, i took the liberty of counting how many actions were needed compared to what some pros used. They click 10 times for the probe to go build a pylon, or click their army let's say fast units on 1 slow on 2, (1,2,1,2) etc with their army standing completely safe doing nothing. This is most noticeable when they're in a hurry for something, and need it really fast, clicking about 10-20 times for a unit to go build something, as if clicking more made it go faster to the destination, where 1 click is enough.
Go check it for yourself. Most guys that have 300+ apm spam 3 to 5 times as much of their real apm. White Ra spams less than usual and he's at aprox 120. If i were to see the real apm of most top players it would be around 80-120.
Most players do have a ~30% redundancy in their actions. If you have 300 apm, then your EAPM is going to be around 200 or so. If you have 100 apm, then your EAPM is going to be around 60-70.
Truth of the matter, you won't get EAPM without increasing APM and "useless APM"
If APM wasnt important you wouldnt see constant rise of APM thorough the course of time. See Jaedong`s FPvod I linked, maybe his APM isnt 100% effective, but a damn good part of it is.
You say that even with 300 APM players cannot macro to the fullest, thats quite an argument in favour to not against it. If a lower level players are spamming APM and boosting about it that shouldnt concern you.
Wrong game. This isn't BW with 12 units per action group, 1 building per action group, retarded movement AI (granted, we still have some challenged AI at times), and workers that need babysitting. For the most part, a lot of the battles in SC2 can be left unattended for 1-2s after the initial engagement. Mixed with the ability to put an entire army on one action group as well as production facilities, along with smartcasting, there isn't the SAME need for high APM.
Useless point... High APM is never useless, regardless of whether it is SC1 or SC2. There is always need for higher APM... Battles in BW were mostly 1a2a3a too, with some burrowing, sieging, or spellcasting here and there.
On March 05 2011 19:43 VzO wrote: honestly you SOUND like you have low apm and trying to rationalize that it isn't important.
1.) a player with higher apm generally is better at starcraft, PERIOD. This is a fact, if you gather the average apm between bronze vs gold, you will get thish result, diamond vs masters, masters vs players @ gsl / notable tournaments. YOU WILL see that as people get better their apm goes higher. 2.) a player spams simply because he wants to get used to tapping his keys. I want to be able to press 1 withou even know i almost pressed 1, i spam it so much that it becomes instinctive. its rather stupid to say this is bad, as it can only improve your muscle memory. So what if your apm actually dies down? That has nothing to do with the benefits of spamming. 3.) low level players DO NOT glorify their apm. 99% of the low levels player have anything BUT high apm. 4.) Nobody is glorifying apm, you took a few tastosis lines and exploded it outa proportion as if apm=direct mesasure of sc ability when clearly they've said time again its not but its an indicator if no other evidence is available.
1) = WRONG, SjoW is one of the best Starcraft 2 players out there, And he has a average of 70 apm. Apm doesnt matter in sc2 yet because as of now, Its all about game understanding.
Very silly statement. Apm matters and a lot.
You want to say that Sjow has 70avg apm on long macro game? Well then the only explanation is that he is playing terran; I can't imagine someone playing with 70 apm at high level.
Well I agree the post wasnt as thought out as it should be, But fact is, Sjow (Even as playing zerg in practice) _Has about 50 Apm unless alot takes place. oGsTheStc in a long macro game on taldarim altar had 90 apm average. My only point(even tho very poorly said) was that you really dont need apm at all to be good at micro/macro. BUT, someone needs high apm to macro. And someone dont. Really nothing you can clear out in a thread. It depends on players/playstyle/skills etc
Man how the hell Sjow can play zerg with 50 apm?
I remember MrBitter asking ret what does he think about apm and spamming and ret said that he does not give a sh*t about apm and still he goes into 200apm in long games. And even he has ton of energy on his queens in late game. There is not such thing as "100apm is enough for pretty much everything in this game". That's just silly.
On March 05 2011 19:40 GhostFall wrote: yeah watching the gsl, I see players with 200-300 apm and I still see, almost every game, areas where pros could use more apm throughout the game.
But is it that they could use MORE apm? Or is it that they could have more EFFICIENT apm? Again, there is no way that they are doing 6 things every single second, and still can't do as much as they need to do.
... are you serious ... You should watch some FPVODs :z
Again, I feel as though you did not my entire post (it was quite long, tbh), so I will reiterate a bit to you here.
I watch streams and replays all the time, and I have yet to see someone consistently performing 6 useful actions every single second. Sure, they might warp in 6 stalkers in a second, but the very NEXT second, they aren't doing 6 more actions just like that. And the next second, 6 more actions. In 10 seconds, 60 useful actions were performed? I have never, ever seen that.
I find your definition of ''useful actions'' strange, selecting gateways, jumping to battle scene, ordering different groups of units to attack, adding units to groups are all useful actions even though you dont seem to think so. Game counts it that way. To do what you are implying pros should do to ''warrant 300 APM'' would take at least 3 times the number of ingame actions.
"So, why do we glorify APM so much, when it seems that 66% (ish) of it is completely spamy, meaningless clicks?"
indiscreet assumptions aside, you pretty much answered your own question. okay fine. higher apm = more spam, which is pretty impressive. but higher apm = more actions, which is also impressive. combine the two and you get super impressive. hence, we glorify APM
On March 05 2011 19:40 GhostFall wrote: yeah watching the gsl, I see players with 200-300 apm and I still see, almost every game, areas where pros could use more apm throughout the game.
But is it that they could use MORE apm? Or is it that they could have more EFFICIENT apm? Again, there is no way that they are doing 6 things every single second, and still can't do as much as they need to do.
... are you serious ... You should watch some FPVODs :z
Again, I feel as though you did not my entire post (it was quite long, tbh), so I will reiterate a bit to you here.
I watch streams and replays all the time, and I have yet to see someone consistently performing 6 useful actions every single second. Sure, they might warp in 6 stalkers in a second, but the very NEXT second, they aren't doing 6 more actions just like that. And the next second, 6 more actions. In 10 seconds, 60 useful actions were performed? I have never, ever seen that.
I find your definition of ''useful actions'' strange, selecting gateways, jumping to battle scene, ordering different groups of units to attack, adding units to groups are all useful actions even though you dont seem to think so. Game counts it that way. To do what you are implying pros should do to ''warrant 300 APM'' would take at least 3 times the number of ingame actions.
I apologize if I sounded like I was being closed-minded, as I am not. Everything that you said would absolutely warrant APM. My argument was simply that, even in the things you have said, how many times do you see those things happening 6 times a second, every single second?
On March 05 2011 19:52 Apolo wrote: One time, i took the liberty of counting how many actions were needed compared to what some pros used. They click 10 times for the probe to go build a pylon, or click their army let's say fast units on 1 slow on 2, (1,2,1,2) etc with their army standing completely safe doing nothing. This is most noticeable when they're in a hurry for something, and need it really fast, clicking about 10-20 times for a unit to go build something, as if clicking more made it go faster to the destination, where 1 click is enough.
Go check it for yourself. Most guys that have 300+ apm spam 3 to 5 times as much of their real apm. White Ra spams less than usual and he's at aprox 120. If i were to see the real apm of most top players it would be around 80-120.
are you using American/European players as an example and which? Yes SC2 is not dependant on APM, but as the competition increases and winning with 2 marauders and 2 marines lowers, it becomes more important.
You have to know, SC2 is in its infancy, as the game develops and time passes mechanical skill becomes more important. Also stop using NA/EU as examples, they don't work anymore.
How come NA/EU players cant be exampled? you do realise that koreans arent nr 1 in the world at sc2? Remember all the people who dont go to korea and play in the Gsl. If the Gsl was online so more ppl could join, im SURE that it would not have been a korean that had wun all seasons. im pretty sure that the top player in the world is korean. but top players in majority is not.
hahahahaahhaahaahah
Koreans (and players in korea) are #1 and only gaining edge on the rest of the world. You have 8-9 teams living in 4 bedroom apartments practicing all day and sleeping a foot from one another. There is no way they aren't the best after that.
You may have a few amazing players elsewhere that can hang with them but such refined strategies and training partners is enough edge for anyone.
On March 05 2011 19:31 FubsyGamr wrote: I guarantee that if you were to take someone like NesTea, and before he EVER started playing SC:BW and SC2, put him in his own world where no one had even heard of key spamming, or boosting APM (or APM at all, for that matter) he would have exactly the same skill that he has today, but his APM would be somewhere around 60-100, not this amazing 350-400 that we see today.
Actually, Nestea is the one pro who doesn't apm spam at the beginning of his matches...
On March 05 2011 19:43 VzO wrote: honestly you SOUND like you have low apm and trying to rationalize that it isn't important.
1.) a player with higher apm generally is better at starcraft, PERIOD. This is a fact, if you gather the average apm between bronze vs gold, you will get thish result, diamond vs masters, masters vs players @ gsl / notable tournaments. YOU WILL see that as people get better their apm goes higher. 2.) a player spams simply because he wants to get used to tapping his keys. I want to be able to press 1 withou even know i almost pressed 1, i spam it so much that it becomes instinctive. its rather stupid to say this is bad, as it can only improve your muscle memory. So what if your apm actually dies down? That has nothing to do with the benefits of spamming. 3.) low level players DO NOT glorify their apm. 99% of the low levels player have anything BUT high apm. 4.) Nobody is glorifying apm, you took a few tastosis lines and exploded it outa proportion as if apm=direct mesasure of sc ability when clearly they've said time again its not but its an indicator if no other evidence is available.
1) = WRONG, SjoW is one of the best Starcraft 2 players out there, And he has a average of 70 apm. Apm doesnt matter in sc2 yet because as of now, Its all about game understanding.
Very silly statement. Apm matters and a lot.
You want to say that Sjow has 70avg apm on long macro game? Well then the only explanation is that he is playing terran; I can't imagine someone playing with 70 apm at high level.
Well I agree the post wasnt as thought out as it should be, But fact is, Sjow (Even as playing zerg in practice) _Has about 50 Apm unless alot takes place. oGsTheStc in a long macro game on taldarim altar had 90 apm average. My only point(even tho very poorly said) was that you really dont need apm at all to be good at micro/macro. BUT, someone needs high apm to macro. And someone dont. Really nothing you can clear out in a thread. It depends on players/playstyle/skills etc
It's true that SjoW and some other players are very successful with low APM, but it's also true that if you watch SjoW's games you can see he often struggles with macro and multitasking in the mid-to-late-game because he doesn't have the speed that a lot of other players do. Quite simply, if Sjow had the same strategy / gamesense / micro / decision making that he does now, and the hand speed to have a consistent 200 APM, he would be better. : )
Same discussion all over again. You will see at some point that APM matters and that every player has an individual speed. There is a degree that is needed when it comes to multitasking, but there are players that feel more comfortable with 400APM and others that feel comfortable with 200APM.
Then you always need to multiply the SC2 APM by 1,4(?) so it actually becomes the BW APM. And yes there is soem spam but if your hand speed isn't up to par at the point when you need it for example in a battle where you need to micro/macro and multitask a lot then tehre is no way you'll be good at that timeframe.
I won't post anymore because even those people that say that it doesn't matter will eventually learn that it does, even if it takes 3-4 more years.
APM is not important because it makes you a better player. Becoming a better player involves doing more things at the same time, which will make you have higher APM. Don't worry about who spams ans who is effective with their apm, just think about all the things you want to be doing, prioritize them, and then do as many of them as you can. You'll need/get high apm.
Just skimmed the posts and noone seems to mention this, but doing 6 Clicks and "Thinking 6 unrelated things" are very different.
Ex Battle starts: 1 a, 2a 3m (6 clicks, 6 actions) (Dont even know if the placing the Attack counts seperate) 1a, 2FFF (6 Actions) 3SS, 1a Shift AA (7 actions) (and using Terran as example) 6(rax)mmdd 7(factory)T 8(starport) 2x medivac (10 actions)
You might not be able to do all your building within 1 sec, but usually you have more production buildings lategame.
But as you see, you can easily use alot of apm for microing and macroing at the same time. This ove r a course of just a few sec. Its not unrealistic to attack with your army, cast force fields, cast Storm, Direct attack, and build units within a very short period of time... And you really do need the apm for it else it might take you TWICE or TRICE as long to do.
On March 05 2011 19:40 GhostFall wrote: yeah watching the gsl, I see players with 200-300 apm and I still see, almost every game, areas where pros could use more apm throughout the game.
But is it that they could use MORE apm? Or is it that they could have more EFFICIENT apm? Again, there is no way that they are doing 6 things every single second, and still can't do as much as they need to do.
... are you serious ... You should watch some FPVODs :z
Again, I feel as though you did not my entire post (it was quite long, tbh), so I will reiterate a bit to you here.
I watch streams and replays all the time, and I have yet to see someone consistently performing 6 useful actions every single second. Sure, they might warp in 6 stalkers in a second, but the very NEXT second, they aren't doing 6 more actions just like that. And the next second, 6 more actions. In 10 seconds, 60 useful actions were performed? I have never, ever seen that.
I find your definition of ''useful actions'' strange, selecting gateways, jumping to battle scene, ordering different groups of units to attack, adding units to groups are all useful actions even though you dont seem to think so. Game counts it that way. To do what you are implying pros should do to ''warrant 300 APM'' would take at least 3 times the number of ingame actions.
I apologize if I sounded like I was being closed-minded, as I am not. Everything that you said would absolutely warrant APM. My argument was simply that, even in the things you have said, how many times do you see those things happening 6 times a second, every single second?
Why does it matter if they need or do not need to do it every second? If they ever do need to do it, it is better to keep up that speed constantly. Similar to how even though the opponent's mutalisks are across the map, you still keep yours moving, in fear of that dreaded acceleration time.
If APM wasnt important you wouldnt see constant rise of APM thorough the course of time. See Jaedong`s FPvod I linked, maybe his APM isnt 100% effective, but a damn good part of it is.
You say that even with 300 APM players cannot macro to the fullest, thats quite an argument in favour to not against it. If a lower level players are spamming APM and boosting about it that shouldnt concern you.
Wrong game. This isn't BW with 12 units per action group, 1 building per action group, retarded movement AI (granted, we still have some challenged AI at times), and workers that need babysitting. For the most part, a lot of the battles in SC2 can be left unattended for 1-2s after the initial engagement. Mixed with the ability to put an entire army on one action group as well as production facilities, along with smartcasting, there isn't the SAME need for high APM.
Really is a shame isn't it
In some ways, yes. In other ways, it's a blessing. The community as a whole is still exploring this game in great detail, and there is still a LOT more to come. Not having a ridiculous barrier to even be competitive at this game allows for some people who lack the dedication to build physical mechanics to influence the game in a more creative way. Notice how almost every game in the GSL brings us a new approach to a matchup on both old and new maps. If the requirements of playing even at the most basic of levels was 150 APM, I bet we'd lose a LOT of the variety in play that we have now. It's a shame that people who devoted that much time and effort to developing the skill of high APM have yet to find a consistent way to use it in SC2.
On March 05 2011 19:52 Apolo wrote: One time, i took the liberty of counting how many actions were needed compared to what some pros used. They click 10 times for the probe to go build a pylon, or click their army let's say fast units on 1 slow on 2, (1,2,1,2) etc with their army standing completely safe doing nothing. This is most noticeable when they're in a hurry for something, and need it really fast, clicking about 10-20 times for a unit to go build something, as if clicking more made it go faster to the destination, where 1 click is enough.
Go check it for yourself. Most guys that have 300+ apm spam 3 to 5 times as much of their real apm. White Ra spams less than usual and he's at aprox 120. If i were to see the real apm of most top players it would be around 80-120.
are you using American/European players as an example and which? Yes SC2 is not dependant on APM, but as the competition increases and winning with 2 marauders and 2 marines lowers, it becomes more important.
You have to know, SC2 is in its infancy, as the game develops and time passes mechanical skill becomes more important. Also stop using NA/EU as examples, they don't work anymore.
How come NA/EU players cant be exampled? you do realise that koreans arent nr 1 in the world at sc2? Remember all the people who dont go to korea and play in the Gsl. If the Gsl was online so more ppl could join, im SURE that it would not have been a korean that had wun all seasons. im pretty sure that the top player in the world is korean. but top players in majority is not.
hahahahaahhaahaahah
Koreans (and players in korea) are #1 and only gaining edge on the rest of the world. You have 8-9 teams living in 4 bedroom apartments practicing all day and sleeping a foot from one another. There is no way they aren't the best after that.
I'm so tired of this argument. Why would it matter where you sleep? At the end of the day, they are just sitting in front of their computers like everyone else. If you really want to know why Korea is so dominant, you have to look deeper. How come Asian children do better in school, are better at math, etc.? Well, look at this map and you will find an important part of the explanation - also for why they are so dominant in Starcraft 2.
People spam because they think it feels comfortable, so why not do it. And no, starcraft 2 may not require you to be overly fast, but brood war certainly did, and if you watch the jaedong fpvod that was linked earlier, that's 300+ apm, and the majority of that is effective.
When you have higher APM the game seems to go slower to me atleast and it's easier if to go down in pace than it is to step it up. I always think it's better to have a consistent APM around 200 so if there become 4 battles all over the place, you still don't have to slow down.
On March 05 2011 19:52 Apolo wrote: One time, i took the liberty of counting how many actions were needed compared to what some pros used. They click 10 times for the probe to go build a pylon, or click their army let's say fast units on 1 slow on 2, (1,2,1,2) etc with their army standing completely safe doing nothing. This is most noticeable when they're in a hurry for something, and need it really fast, clicking about 10-20 times for a unit to go build something, as if clicking more made it go faster to the destination, where 1 click is enough.
Go check it for yourself. Most guys that have 300+ apm spam 3 to 5 times as much of their real apm. White Ra spams less than usual and he's at aprox 120. If i were to see the real apm of most top players it would be around 80-120.
are you using American/European players as an example and which? Yes SC2 is not dependant on APM, but as the competition increases and winning with 2 marauders and 2 marines lowers, it becomes more important.
You have to know, SC2 is in its infancy, as the game develops and time passes mechanical skill becomes more important. Also stop using NA/EU as examples, they don't work anymore.
How come NA/EU players cant be exampled? you do realise that koreans arent nr 1 in the world at sc2? Remember all the people who dont go to korea and play in the Gsl. If the Gsl was online so more ppl could join, im SURE that it would not have been a korean that had wun all seasons. im pretty sure that the top player in the world is korean. but top players in majority is not.
hahahahaahhaahaahah
Koreans (and players in korea) are #1 and only gaining edge on the rest of the world. You have 8-9 teams living in 4 bedroom apartments practicing all day and sleeping a foot from one another. There is no way they aren't the best after that.
You may have a few amazing players elsewhere that can hang with them but such refined strategies and training partners is enough edge for anyone.
Well, that contradicts your own point. They practice 8-9 hours a day. and STILL SjoW, WhiteRa and TLO can keep up. Sais something doesnt it? What if they played as much. Pretty sure they would own them. And NO korea is not dominant at Sc2 like they were in scbw.. Remember that jaedong, flash etc have played 8-9 hours aday for 5-7 years. Next time you quote. Please think about what you say. What you mean. And sources.
It's not about "warming up", it's about keeping yourself moving and active. It's very difficult to go from not doing anything to managing 3 bases, an army, scouting, etc.
Tasteless doesn't glorify people spamming at the beginning and neither does Day9, they tease them for it a lot. However, a professional player's APM is going to remain above 100 even 30 minutes into the game because that is how many things they need to do to be as optimal as possible.
Only scrubs glorify APM. However, "real" APM (not spamming) is still a decent indicator of multi-tasking abilities and experience. It's the ability to make many decisions very quickly, manage many different things, and be mechanically skilled enough to execute the required actions.
No, APM is not getting out of hand, and talking about APM doesn't fucking matter. Just play the game.
Oh, also.
Well, that contradicts your own point. They practice 8-9 hours a day. and STILL SjoW, WhiteRa and TLO can keep up. Sais something doesnt it? What if they played as much. Pretty sure they would own them. And NO korea is not dominant at Sc2 like they were in scbw.. Remember that jaedong, flash etc have played 8-9 hours aday for 5-7 years. Next time you quote. Please think about what you say. What you mean. And sources.
Yeah, go check out how well WhiteRa and SjoW have been doing against Code A koreans recently.
Well a lot of the clicking is just meant to be that, clicking to check. You dont want to do anything with your click other than click. Take Terran as an example: check Barracks, check CC and energy, check minimap, check factory and or Starport. Check top right for supply, check bottom left again. Camera is on your army and your eyes on the minimap, do this rotation as often as possible, not because you do anything, but just to check and make something the second something else is done.
You mentioned Incontrols stream in your post, and I remember him queuing up like 4 phoenixes saying he wasn't able to hit them at the perfect interval each time, which would lead us to think he needs more apm to be able to hit those intervals perfectly each time. APM is more about CHECKING than doing. This seems to be a common misunderstanding actually. If you're head is able to comprehend the build time on an scv, 4 different timed marines, 2 siege tanks, 4 medivacs from 2 Starport, then you can just skip all this clicking, but really, who can keep control of all that?
So the point here is that APM isn't about DOING all the time, it's about checking and knowing. Higher APM will allow you to KNOW when stuff finishes, it frees up money and makes you able to have both a bigger army and a leaner infrastructure with less, which, well, is kinda the point aint it? If a bronze player has 30 APM and misses his timings on units ALL the time he'll end up with 3 times and many buildings (assuming he's got the brains to build em yet) and his army will STILL be smaller than the masters league player who checked his necessary buildings all the time and hit most of the timings.
I spam because there is nothing else to do. Same reason i do the pencil-twirl in class, or tap my fingers when i'm bored. I also sometimes just alt-tab out during the first 3-4 mins instead of spamming. But i cant handle just pressing S every 15 secs while looking at my command center, too boring.
It also helps you get into the game and sort of warm up.
As a player with 40 apm, the VAST majority of my actions are deliberate decisions and not spam. Such a low apm, while making a fair amount of decisions and actions per minute, is a much clearer representation of real-life apm.
Accordingly, as i am a somewhat new rts and sc2 player, my apm will continue growing as i continue to practice/play. for me, my apm will only increase when a new element is being integrated into my play, such as more accurate and rapid micro, continuous warp prism harassment, and constant army repositioning. when these elements are accurately and constantly implemented in my play, my apm will rise to say, 60, or 80, and i will win far more games due to superior play.
Albeit this is not the case for many players, as corroborated by the poll (I'm the only one to vote average apm <60 thus far (i do get up to like 70 in macro games)), APM is a rather accurate measure of the decisions i am actually making, and what i am actually doing. thereby apm can be misleading, or accurate, contingent on levels of spam which vary player to player and game to game.
A lot of "actions" seem to be selecting various things so the player can make sure that they're active. Is each click an effective action? Not really. On the other hand, the process of checking everything constantly can grant an advantage. The information provided by clicking through things rapidly can be valuable even if no actual action directly results from each click.
On March 05 2011 20:12 Zerokaiser wrote: It's not about "warming up", it's about keeping yourself moving and active. It's very difficult to go from not doing anything to managing 3 bases, an army, scouting, etc.
Tasteless doesn't glorify people spamming at the beginning and neither does Day9, they tease them for it a lot. However, a professional player's APM is going to remain above 100 even 30 minutes into the game because that is how many things they need to do to be as optimal as possible.
Only scrubs glorify APM. However, "real" APM (not spamming) is still a decent indicator of multi-tasking abilities and experience. It's the ability to make many decisions very quickly, manage many different things, and be mechanically skilled enough to execute the required actions.
No, APM is not getting out of hand, and talking about APM doesn't fucking matter. Just play the game.
Well, that contradicts your own point. They practice 8-9 hours a day. and STILL SjoW, WhiteRa and TLO can keep up. Sais something doesnt it? What if they played as much. Pretty sure they would own them. And NO korea is not dominant at Sc2 like they were in scbw.. Remember that jaedong, flash etc have played 8-9 hours aday for 5-7 years. Next time you quote. Please think about what you say. What you mean. And sources.
Yeah, go check out how well WhiteRa and SjoW have been doing against Code A koreans recently.
Well, Wasnt really my point. My point is, What IF they practiced as much. Its nothing magical about koreans lol. But now im out of topic. so are you. Suggest we dont spam wrong thread anymore.
On March 05 2011 20:14 Deadlyfish wrote: I spam because there is nothing else to do. Same reason i do the pencil-twirl in class, or tap my fingers when i'm bored. I also sometimes just alt-tab out during the first 3-4 mins instead of spamming. But i cant handle just pressing S every 15 secs while looking at my command center, too boring.
It also helps you get into the game and sort of warm up.
You alt+tab out in the middle of the game :O Are you serious?
The spamming is not for warmup or such, it has one simple reason: Players are bored when the match starts, there is nothing to do, so they'll do anything until something happens.
first of all, apm spam sounds realy stupid and stuff, but i had seen this on a other forum and tryed to experment with it, i am still youngh but that dont matter here now, i tryed in 2 weekends to full gameing, like over 8 hours over playing a day.
the first weekend was with spam, the first game i messed some things up couse the spam BUT later i played muchts muchts better like even yust 1 hour later i didnt have any trouble and played without any problems in executing
the second weekend did i without spam, i did messed the first game les, but the more i played, the harder it get, i was not getting the rythem any more what i used to get with spam, and played A LOT WORSE.
the thing is, you realy dont get it until you done it, and if u will try longer gameing sesions over like 2 hours, i heavly recomend to spam atleast the first games.
On March 05 2011 20:14 Deadlyfish wrote: I spam because there is nothing else to do. Same reason i do the pencil-twirl in class, or tap my fingers when i'm bored. I also sometimes just alt-tab out during the first 3-4 mins instead of spamming. But i cant handle just pressing S every 15 secs while looking at my command center, too boring.
It also helps you get into the game and sort of warm up.
You alt+tab out in the middle of the game :O Are you serious?
During the first 3-4 mins, yea. What else is there to do? Not like i do when i have something useful to do ingame. But you only need like, what, 5 apm during the first 5 mins?
On March 05 2011 19:40 GhostFall wrote: yeah watching the gsl, I see players with 200-300 apm and I still see, almost every game, areas where pros could use more apm throughout the game.
But is it that they could use MORE apm? Or is it that they could have more EFFICIENT apm? Again, there is no way that they are doing 6 things every single second, and still can't do as much as they need to do.
I always thought that was the real number that matter'd like you pointed out EFFECTIVE APM is what makes pros top tier and quite a few do spam to warm up or out of habit.
Nothing wrong with 300 apm unless your not being efficient with it and well then you dont really have 300apm then do ya? your just spamming keys.
Now if someone could be effective with it we would be seeing the new JD or Flash of sc2, man the things you could do with 300 effective apm ......
" think we actually need to take a look at that, analytically. Let's take a middle ground of 6 actions a second, just for fun. I want you to find your nearest stopwatch, time just ONE second, and then attempt to think of 6 different things. I bet that you cannot."
I stopped reading after this. What you clearly have over looked in this scenario is that our brain is NOT thinking of things, rather doing them without thinking. Your brain has adapted to skipping sequential steps in order to "save time". Think about it this way... when you have a conversation with someone do you really try to spell out every word you say in your head? Of course not because that would not be very efficient and our brains skip these steps after repeated action in order to preserve that efficiency.
Apm is certainly reflective of skill to some extent and you need to be relatively fast to play well. Players with 300 apm are not by default better than players with 200 but they are damn sure better than players with 70.
People aren't better because they have higher apm, they have higher apm because they are better, and as they get better and better mechanically their apm will rise because they are doing everything they need to do faster.
As for spamming early game, you are reading to much into it. People don't do it to make their apm seem higher, or even to warm up. They just do it because it's something to do in the early game when not much else is going on and it's uncomfortable to not be doing anything.
The faster you play the more you can do in a few seconds, which is really more important in the late game than anything. Most games end before 200ish APM is even needed.
Most low level Americans simply spam for the sake of spamming then starts to become slower again as the game progresses.
Spamming helps you get rid of adrenaline, even if you don't get an adrenaline rush in every ladder game the routine of spamming will help you whenever that adrenaline comes. There might good reasons for spamming the same action multiple times, for example you might botch up one or two of the actions, or maybe you make a quick inaccurate click at first and then adjust it multiple times until it's correct. There's no reason to assume there's a one to one relationship between thoughts and actions, a big part of mechanical expertise is that your fingers do stuff on their own, freeing up your cognitive resources for more complex activities. Finger speed is good to have, doing any one action really fast will make a difference i the long run. Being fast at tapping, macroing or microing will help you, the way to increase your speed is to train your fingers to be fast by spamming actions at max speed.
So there's three reasons to spam: 1 - Burning adrenaline, doing it in practice makes a routine that's helpful when it counts. 2 - Adjusting/stacking actions to avoid mistakes and improve accuracy. 3 - Practicing speed, good during practice and the habit carries over into important games.
Obviously effective APM is important and whatever spam APM people can put out is less important. You could try to argue that there's no connection between spam APM and effective APM but I'm pretty sure there's a strong correlation there, for the reasons mentioned above.
High apm just happens especially if you are a zerg player because you have to use your larva instantly when it pops - i dont think about oh i should build a drone as soon as i have 50 minerals i just spam 1sd (select hatch, select larva, build drones) i dont think about it anymore.On a sidenote spamming boxes actually makes my apm lower than spamming 1sd 4 1sd 4 1sd 4 (4 being the scouting overlord).
Also there is always something you can do - if you had 900 apm there is probably always something you wanna do, especially as zerg because in theory you want poke the front constantly inject larva so your queen never gets over 26 energy right before she injects, you want your overlords positioned just right, spread the creep just in time etc. - building stuff and never getting supply blocked is actually doable without high apm.
The more you play the more things you´ll remember you have to do. I often times dont micro battles because i rather focus on macroing/injecting spreading creep and building more hatches - i wish i would have more(effective) apm to do all at the same time. And you wont get faster if you dont train to be fast - the spamming in the beginning seems like you are doing nothing but it helps your brain and your fingers to get faster.
On March 05 2011 19:40 GhostFall wrote: yeah watching the gsl, I see players with 200-300 apm and I still see, almost every game, areas where pros could use more apm throughout the game.
But is it that they could use MORE apm? Or is it that they could have more EFFICIENT apm? Again, there is no way that they are doing 6 things every single second, and still can't do as much as they need to do.
... are you serious ... You should watch some FPVODs :z
Again, I feel as though you did not my entire post (it was quite long, tbh), so I will reiterate a bit to you here.
I watch streams and replays all the time, and I have yet to see someone consistently performing 6 useful actions every single second. Sure, they might warp in 6 stalkers in a second, but the very NEXT second, they aren't doing 6 more actions just like that. And the next second, 6 more actions. In 10 seconds, 60 useful actions were performed? I have never, ever seen that.
I find your definition of ''useful actions'' strange, selecting gateways, jumping to battle scene, ordering different groups of units to attack, adding units to groups are all useful actions even though you dont seem to think so. Game counts it that way. To do what you are implying pros should do to ''warrant 300 APM'' would take at least 3 times the number of ingame actions.
I apologize if I sounded like I was being closed-minded, as I am not. Everything that you said would absolutely warrant APM. My argument was simply that, even in the things you have said, how many times do you see those things happening 6 times a second, every single second?
I would think many times, sure a fraction of that APM would be spam, maybe even quite a large fraction lets say 1/3rd but it is still 200 EAPM left and ensuing increase in map awareness and reaction time. These two things along with harassment (optional) I would like to single out as there indeed may be a cap of APM you need to macro properly, but an increase in APM would allways help you with those two(three) and battle managment too which many people underestimate and count off as 1a.
I'm going to use Starcraft 1 as examples rather than Starcraft 2, because I am much more familiar with the proscene around SC1 than SC2, and this discussion is not about how APM relates to either game, but whether the measurement of APM is trivial or not.
There are two kind of related problems with your argument: 1. The 300 apm is an average. That doesn't mean he has 300 apm every second of the game. When the game is less intense, he's maybe at a level of around 150-200 while during intense battles, it can shoot up to 500, or even higher. You're probably right that not every single one of these "actions" is at 100% efficiency, however, it's probably way more difficult and you'll find yourself screwing up a lot more trying to ONLY enter the efficient commands rather than just spam knowing the correct action is in there somewhere. Entering the one efficient command is like trying to hit a bullseye. Sure you CAN do it with one bullet, but it's so much easier if you spray it with a minigun.
2. It appears to me your sense of an "action per second" is distorted. When you attack move two groups into ground, that's 6 actions. 1 -> a -> click -> 2 -> a -> click. I can pull that off in a second without problem. Put that together with macro actions and there's a bunch more actions in a short amount of time. Such sets of actions is not difficult to pull off in a short amount of time for even a mediocre-at-best player like myself. For pros, not only is it cake, but they'll do it even faster than me.
Although I definitely agree that solid knowledge of the game and strategy trumps "APM", APM is far from insignificant. One of the best SC1 players, Stork, is considered to have low APM, yet he still manages to pull off at least about 250.
On March 05 2011 20:14 Deadlyfish wrote: I spam because there is nothing else to do. Same reason i do the pencil-twirl in class, or tap my fingers when i'm bored. I also sometimes just alt-tab out during the first 3-4 mins instead of spamming. But i cant handle just pressing S every 15 secs while looking at my command center, too boring.
It also helps you get into the game and sort of warm up.
You alt+tab out in the middle of the game :O Are you serious?
During the first 3-4 mins, yea. What else is there to do? Not like i do when i have something useful to do ingame. But you only need like, what, 5 apm during the first 5 mins?
Yea but how do you even get 5 APM when you are alt+tabbed? You still have to build workers, pylons, gas, gateway, etc.
" To be able to have 60 APM (that's exactly 1 action every second, without fault) but to have each and every click/button press mean something….wouldn't that be more desired? "
producing units when you have a big economy requires quite some APM, imagine you are terran you build 4 marines, 2 marauders, 1 tank and 2 viking out of your production.
that's 14 actions = 14 seconds if you have "60 effective APM" this is freaking huge.
now imagine that you have to build supplies and manage your scout and your army, you will soon realise that some parts of the game requires higher APM.(maybe 150)
But yes, on the begining of the game only 20 - 30 APM are necessary.
I spam my hotkeys and click on drones individually at the start of the game sometimes to get into the game a bit. Its not a bad idea to have some kind of routines to get into a fresh new game. The boosting of the "apm" means nothing though.
On March 05 2011 20:14 Deadlyfish wrote: I spam because there is nothing else to do. Same reason i do the pencil-twirl in class, or tap my fingers when i'm bored. I also sometimes just alt-tab out during the first 3-4 mins instead of spamming. But i cant handle just pressing S every 15 secs while looking at my command center, too boring.
It also helps you get into the game and sort of warm up.
You alt+tab out in the middle of the game :O Are you serious?
During the first 3-4 mins, yea. What else is there to do? Not like i do when i have something useful to do ingame. But you only need like, what, 5 apm during the first 5 mins?
Yea but how do you even get 5 APM when you are alt+tabbed? You still have to build workers, pylons, gas, gateway, etc.
I can guarantee that he misses half the things he needs to do. How the hell someone can alt-tab all the time in 3-4 minutes in the game? I mean you build workers, supply, buildings, you scout etc.
An action is not an action, its a key press or click.
selecting a unit, pressing a and clicking is already 3 actions.
What you claim as first second would take at least 14 actions, not counting F keys or Map clicks to change the viewing area to build structures. or multiple group keys.
Tapping may seem like useless apm for example, but its a tool that helps your non-perfect mind along macroing, because you're always monitoring your production.
of course hammering shit out for the first minute is bad practicing if you're then being mesmerized by the pretty fighting scene instead of using the established apm to do something. Spamming useless is not a way to increase your effective apm, you have to work that up specifically.
On March 05 2011 20:12 Zerokaiser wrote: It's not about "warming up", it's about keeping yourself moving and active. It's very difficult to go from not doing anything to managing 3 bases, an army, scouting, etc.
Tasteless doesn't glorify people spamming at the beginning and neither does Day9, they tease them for it a lot. However, a professional player's APM is going to remain above 100 even 30 minutes into the game because that is how many things they need to do to be as optimal as possible.
Only scrubs glorify APM. However, "real" APM (not spamming) is still a decent indicator of multi-tasking abilities and experience. It's the ability to make many decisions very quickly, manage many different things, and be mechanically skilled enough to execute the required actions.
No, APM is not getting out of hand, and talking about APM doesn't fucking matter. Just play the game.
Oh, also.
Well, that contradicts your own point. They practice 8-9 hours a day. and STILL SjoW, WhiteRa and TLO can keep up. Sais something doesnt it? What if they played as much. Pretty sure they would own them. And NO korea is not dominant at Sc2 like they were in scbw.. Remember that jaedong, flash etc have played 8-9 hours aday for 5-7 years. Next time you quote. Please think about what you say. What you mean. And sources.
Yeah, go check out how well WhiteRa and SjoW have been doing against Code A koreans recently.
Well, Wasnt really my point. My point is, What IF they practiced as much. Its nothing magical about koreans lol. But now im out of topic. so are you. Suggest we dont spam wrong thread anymore.
what if? no one knows. what if i start training seriously instead of barely playing enough games a week so my bonuspool doesnt stack up? would i jump from 3100 masters into top200? answers is, maybe?
discussions like that are totally ridiculous and pointless. also do you really think people like whitera just chill at home,play 2 games aday and then win tournaments? most pros outside korea still train a ton of hours evryday.
and the apm discussion is so old an boring...
spamming helps getting into the "zone" ,muscle memory and all that stuff. some dont do it, most do. and high spike apm always is needed .
high apm doesnt make a good player. but having high apm when you need it is part of beeing a good player. end of story.
On March 05 2011 20:14 Deadlyfish wrote: I spam because there is nothing else to do. Same reason i do the pencil-twirl in class, or tap my fingers when i'm bored. I also sometimes just alt-tab out during the first 3-4 mins instead of spamming. But i cant handle just pressing S every 15 secs while looking at my command center, too boring.
It also helps you get into the game and sort of warm up.
You alt+tab out in the middle of the game :O Are you serious?
During the first 3-4 mins, yea. What else is there to do? Not like i do when i have something useful to do ingame. But you only need like, what, 5 apm during the first 5 mins?
Yea but how do you even get 5 APM when you are alt+tabbed? You still have to build workers, pylons, gas, gateway, etc.
I can guarantee that he misses half the things he needs to do. How the hell someone can alt-tab all the time in 3-4 minutes in the game? I mean you build workers, supply, buildings, you scout etc.
well to be honest, If im playing in windowed mode, I alt tab all the time, Refresh TL threads, Shift songs etc. No problem lol. Think about at start. you build a worker, Then alt tab. Come back when worker is almost done then rebuild another one etc.
You're also not understanding what constitutes an action. Just cycling through your production buildings to make sure you have units on the way is a fair bit of apm in itself, I wouldnt consider that spam..its being aware of your macro.
In your example you list building an expansion as one action, when in reality its several. I play protoss so when i hit my probe hotkey (i always keep one) and queue move him to my expo, then queue the nexus. That process requires multiple actions, not just one. Immediately after doing that I'm probably checking my army, my warpgate time and my robo hotkey. That's a decent apm burst without any unit micro
i've written an (incomplete, ie i havent included some abilities etc) program, that filters my SC2 APM, like the old bwrepinfo.
My average APM ranges from 250-350 depending on matchup and my gameplan ( eg do i go mutas or infestor, do i use more stargates instead of robounits etc).
When i use those values my actual APM ranges from 170-280, which should be above the average pro at the moment.
But.. i have several years of training behind me, to actually get those "useful" apms, but to get there i had to "spam" too, since its hard to increase your overall apm by just getting a faster "Mind", which is needed to not spam at high apm levels.
It also shows that a good understanding/reading of the game is more important at the moment, else i'd be a pro by now, instead of your standard 3.7k Masters guy (with some bonus points \o/)
In fact i win a lot of my games through pure mechanics instead with actual knowledge of the game, but if you just ladder and only have a few friends its hard to talk with people about it anyways, so i have to learn everything from my own gameplay/replays, but in replays you dont always understand every action etc.
Anyways, let people play how they want to, there is no "good" apm and no "bad" apm, if people feel comfortable, they can play at their best, even if they do spam.
I 100% agree with the OP and have often been made to feel silly for asking the same questions. I always thought the pre game spamming was ridiculous as the point you make that when the important parts of the game come around their apm decreases from this level. I think that avg apm is retardedly meaning less BECAUSE of the spamming, if you artificially inflate the number then wtf are you even proving.
and yea I don't spam anything and if I check my avg apm in a replay it's usually 50-55 and that is more than enough to be in high diamond. And I do pride myself on precise actions, I think that if two people play a game and the winner has less apm, that means he did what needed to be done not only better than his opponent but with less effort.
so if a guy with 60 apm beats you and you have 180 apm, consider that every time I did something.. you did 3 things and still couldn't win
On March 05 2011 20:24 Diks wrote: " To be able to have 60 APM (that's exactly 1 action every second, without fault) but to have each and every click/button press mean something….wouldn't that be more desired? "
producing units when you have a big economy requires quite some APM, imagine you are terran you build 4 marines, 2 marauders, 1 tank and 2 viking out of your production.
that's 14 actions = 14 seconds if you have "60 effective APM" this is freaking huge.
now imagine that you have to build supplies and manage your scout and your army, you will soon realise that some parts of the game requires higher APM.(maybe 150)
But yes, on the begining of the game only 20 - 30 APM are necessary.
You really can't keep your scouting probe/drone/scv alive with only 20 apm. I look at early game as me spamming apm to keep my hands warm until the scout goes out, and at that point I need to play as fast as possible to avoid any early game craziness.
I learned the hard way playing pvp, when I didnt have the apm to scout effectively and my core was always a few seconds late. Getting 4gated to death because of a slow playing speed is a strong incentive to get faster
350 APM in starcraft 2 is completely unnecessary , very high APM in brood war is understandable due to 12 unit control groups , no MBS etc but SC2? 180 APM in sc2 = 300+ APM in Brood War.
its a habit for people to spam at the beginning as they want to stay in the flow, I think the gain of it isn't really high, but the subtle side effects of thinking it works are even worth it i guess. And since you have nothing else to do at the beginning you select deselect workers (well some people make them mine more effective per hand, which i think is also a good way for warming up)
Anyway apm is important, someone with 300 apm (which is really alot since sc2 shows you the ingame minutes apm as far as i understood it) can do things 3 times faster as someone with 100 apm. And thats the best part, they don't need to think of 5 things to do. They think of depot and the act of placement costs some actions. they train their actions constantly so they don't have to think about what they do so much, which makes those apm effectiv.
It may not mean that this person is 3 times better. but just looking at the apm i would give him a 1,3 modifier in the chances winning.
Well its easy to find out how much apm you need to build up your bases/army at perfect speed. And i would say with the full income of 3 bases before you hit your 200 max supply, you are better of with a lil more apm.
On March 05 2011 20:14 Deadlyfish wrote: I spam because there is nothing else to do. Same reason i do the pencil-twirl in class, or tap my fingers when i'm bored. I also sometimes just alt-tab out during the first 3-4 mins instead of spamming. But i cant handle just pressing S every 15 secs while looking at my command center, too boring.
It also helps you get into the game and sort of warm up.
You alt+tab out in the middle of the game :O Are you serious?
During the first 3-4 mins, yea. What else is there to do? Not like i do when i have something useful to do ingame. But you only need like, what, 5 apm during the first 5 mins?
Yea but how do you even get 5 APM when you are alt+tabbed? You still have to build workers, pylons, gas, gateway, etc.
I can guarantee that he misses half the things he needs to do. How the hell someone can alt-tab all the time in 3-4 minutes in the game? I mean you build workers, supply, buildings, you scout etc.
What i need to do: Build worker (i can queue some of the time). Supply at 10 Rax at 12, gas at 13. Thats it.
I dont scout until after my orbital starts anyways. If i get worker harassed then i might scare him away. What else do people need to do that early in the game? It's just a ladder game, not a tournament or anything. At most i might get a worker 1-2 seconds too late, if i'm not paying attention, but i've never really needed more than 5 APM early game.
Whilst I do spam at the start, I think it's more than just to keep my hands warm as other people have said. The way I see it, if I have to go from 20 to 200APM in an instant my hands just simply aren't going to be used to it. But, if I spam at the start instead, I have this rhythm I can keep going throughout the game so I'm instantly able to do anything I need.
The OP is just a rant about how spamming is useless. And yeah I don't know who'd disagree. It's a personal, stylistic thing that lets people warm up. The same way you walk around a track between each sprint in a series of sprints so that your body doesn't cool down too much. Or how people keep their body moving by flexing or running when they lift weights. Why would you not want your hands to be warm and ready?
When it's 300 APM, that's just a rate at a given time. So if I hit 30 actions in 6 seconds, then it would read 300 APM for those 6 seconds. And how hard is that?
The point of mentioning APM in casts is for people unfamiliar to the Starcraft to let them see that it's a fast game.
When I start out in a game I'm spamming away at around 200-250 apm but then as the game goes on I settle around 130-150. Through sheer experience I've learnt that going down in apm is much easier than starting low and increasing it all the while trying to stabilise(this is what I did through the entire beta). So personally it's alot better and easier spamming and then setling around a certain level. Also trying to aim for that level straight away doesnt work for me since alot of factors goes into just how many apm I can output(fatigue being the most prominent).
Are you perhaps not human? Where along your meditation journey did you come to the realization that humans need to be 100% consciously aware of every action we make? You need to revise your perception of what APM is. More APM is always better, period.
Its extremely easy to do and helps you alot. I dont find a reason not to do it, and most of the time you can always see if you are building units and so on.
APM isn't getting out of hand, but the people who feel the need to rally the world against spamming their hotkeys before they have things to do sure is. i figured eventually people would calm down and realize that it's just a habit some people have, and that it does help even if only slightly.
here's the deal. incontrol (in this example) spams way more in the beginning because he has way less to think about, so instead he trains his hands to be able to respond to as high of a mechanical demand as he could possibly put on them. it hurts him mid-game when he suddenly decides to just press useless keys, so he won't do it then. at the same time, he recognizes the value of moving your hands really fast, faster than you will ever need to, so that when you DO need to, the movement of your body doesn't hinder that in the slightest. if you can't recognize the value of that, it's a personal problem.
If you understand where APM originated (Brood War) and you ever tried to play the game from where it originated (Brood War) you would understand why pros that switched over from that game would have insanely high APM. It's just not as needed in SC2 as much as it was in that other game, but the habit is still there.
Any "glorification" of APM in the current SC2 is most likely an artifact from BW where professionals leveraged virtually all of their hundreds of actions per minute. Note that personalities who have endorsed warm-up actions and whatnot, like Incontrol, Day9, Tastosis, etc., are all BW veterans who experienced first-hand the power of consistent, accurate hand speed. As reference, as soon as 10 minutes into a BW game like this + Show Spoiler +
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWawFX-Qsls
enough actions are being exploited to do Incontrol's keyboard proud.
SC2 presents a largely different situation and I feel that APM no longer applies as an effective mechanics metric. At this point players are still rapidly discovering and evolving the game, and it's difficult to establish a consensus as to any sort of minimum APM bar for top of the world competition (In BW slow players could not dent Korean pros. In SC2 this is not necessarily the case.) seeing as most competitions are not even world-wide, and intercontinental competitions haven't inspired comprehensive player turn-out on the level of regional ones.
So I do agree with you that in SC2 APM counts over 300 probably feature many mindless, daresay even useless, actions.
To be a devil's advocate for a moment, one important benefit of non-premeditated actions in BW that could potentially exist in SC2 is to reinforce awareness of all the player's assets, thus distributing his attention and maintaining multitask. In other words, when the player consistently switches between disparate control groups (for instance an army, a harass group, an observer, an outrunner or two, a base or two) he ends up paying attention to all of them, making him less likely to make attention lapse misses such as not seeing burrowed roach shadows or dark templar shimmers.
SC2 might also feature actual specific mechanical situations with inhuman ceilings + Show Spoiler +
where players can exploit dexterity into victory. I don't know enough about pros to comment on whether faster players are doing so currently.
Also, try to time your silent reading speed because I'm sure you'll find it far exceeds 6 words per minute. At such a rate, a reader would need 220 seconds to read your OP as it stands at my time of posting. You probably don't need even half the time to read it. The human brain can process packets of information that it has been habituated to digest quite rapidly, especially if it is part of a learned package like reading or playing a game. Try reading at 2 words per second. It will bore you to death immediately.
I also want to address your 2nd counterargument about conditioning. First, counterexamples like Fisheye and SjoW demonstrate that slow players succeed(ed) both in early BW and contemporary SC2. The counterargument also doesn't address the argument. You present the opposition as "A player must have high APM to win." You claim that "Conditioning causes players to adopt high APM." Is this the only reason players adopt high APM? How does the reason behind adopting high APM bear on whether or not high APM is related to something else entirely?
Good luck with your APM debate. Yours is probably one of the better OPs written on the subject.
walking an army is usually what dictates most beginners APM, (think dota)
but majority of professional players APM outside of "walking" is resetting rallies, queen injects @multiple sections of the map, buildings, upgrades, unit multitasking *like overlord/overseer scouting*
mine is usually around 100+ but with the "walking" and macro "reinforcement/rally" portion of the APM it gets as high as 2-300 easily.
average apm is alright to take note of, but when playing, notice how much if your "Clicks" are simply walking or jumping hotkeys (2>2,s>d, 3>3, 4>4>, 5>5, shift+V, base-button, click, base-button, click, base-button, click) a simple string like this if just pressed fast enough can net you a burst of 2-300 apm, and that's just unit checking, and injects.
On March 05 2011 20:38 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: 350 APM in starcraft 2 is completely unnecessary , very high APM in brood war is understandable due to 12 unit control groups , no MBS etc but SC2? 180 APM in sc2 = 300+ APM in Brood War.
sure.. but 300 apm in bw wasn't perfect, people still could macro better and certainly micro better at times, i think sc2 apm is lower in part because people don't know what else they can do.
day9 was talking about how alot of strategy atm is about building big armies and banging them into one another to see who's will win, hopefully this will change as people figure out different styles (for example in bw going SK terran rather than getting tanks seems insane, but can be so effective)
On March 05 2011 20:14 brassmonkey1211 wrote: As a player with 40 apm, the VAST majority of my actions are deliberate decisions and not spam. Such a low apm, while making a fair amount of decisions and actions per minute, is a much clearer representation of real-life apm.
Accordingly, as i am a somewhat new rts and sc2 player, my apm will continue growing as i continue to practice/play. for me, my apm will only increase when a new element is being integrated into my play, such as more accurate and rapid micro, continuous warp prism harassment, and constant army repositioning. when these elements are accurately and constantly implemented in my play, my apm will rise to say, 60, or 80, and i will win far more games due to superior play.
Albeit this is not the case for many players, as corroborated by the poll (I'm the only one to vote average apm <60 thus far (i do get up to like 70 in macro games)), APM is a rather accurate measure of the decisions i am actually making, and what i am actually doing. thereby apm can be misleading, or accurate, contingent on levels of spam which vary player to player and game to game.
p.s. toss is ez though
this is so telling: it's only as we learn and incorporate higher-level strats into our play that our apm has to increase... apm opens the door for different styles, many of which are very effective.
also note "he VAST majority of my actions are deliberate decisions and not spam" is actually a bad thing. when i play, i don't 'decide' to macro its something my hands do whenever they're not otherwise busy spamming at all times puts you into a mindset of constantly doing more things which will lead to better play.
I haven't understood this fixation on APM for a long time. The impact of higher APM is positive, unless you focus on it and not what you actually need to do -in other words- if it is unnatural APM.
In SC2 you don't need such high APM to be competive but if it is natural APM ( you actually control stuff to get maximum value) you profit which in turn makes you better as a player.
The spam in the start is highly useful as it warms your hands up. In the early game you cannot have or benefit from that high APM but you need your hands to move fast and have better control in any case and spam helps with that. The transition to later stages of the game(where your true APM is shown) is also in my experience easier with warm hands.
tl;dr: There is nothing unnatural about spamming or high APM in general, it's all work put into being a better player.
On March 05 2011 19:52 Apolo wrote: One time, i took the liberty of counting how many actions were needed compared to what some pros used. They click 10 times for the probe to go build a pylon, or click their army let's say fast units on 1 slow on 2, (1,2,1,2) etc with their army standing completely safe doing nothing. This is most noticeable when they're in a hurry for something, and need it really fast, clicking about 10-20 times for a unit to go build something, as if clicking more made it go faster to the destination, where 1 click is enough.
Go check it for yourself. Most guys that have 300+ apm spam 3 to 5 times as much of their real apm. White Ra spams less than usual and he's at aprox 120. If i were to see the real apm of most top players it would be around 80-120.
are you using American/European players as an example and which? Yes SC2 is not dependant on APM, but as the competition increases and winning with 2 marauders and 2 marines lowers, it becomes more important.
You have to know, SC2 is in its infancy, as the game develops and time passes mechanical skill becomes more important. Also stop using NA/EU as examples, they don't work anymore.
How come NA/EU players cant be exampled? you do realise that koreans arent nr 1 in the world at sc2? Remember all the people who dont go to korea and play in the Gsl. If the Gsl was online so more ppl could join, im SURE that it would not have been a korean that had wun all seasons. im pretty sure that the top player in the world is korean. but top players in majority is not.
hahahahaahhaahaahah
Koreans (and players in korea) are #1 and only gaining edge on the rest of the world. You have 8-9 teams living in 4 bedroom apartments practicing all day and sleeping a foot from one another. There is no way they aren't the best after that.
You may have a few amazing players elsewhere that can hang with them but such refined strategies and training partners is enough edge for anyone.
Well, that contradicts your own point. They practice 8-9 hours a day. and STILL SjoW, WhiteRa and TLO can keep up. Sais something doesnt it? What if they played as much. Pretty sure they would own them. And NO korea is not dominant at Sc2 like they were in scbw.. Remember that jaedong, flash etc have played 8-9 hours aday for 5-7 years. Next time you quote. Please think about what you say. What you mean. And sources.
TLO lived in the ogs house and sjow is also practicing full time. white-ra is the only legitimate example since he has a job, but he plays protoss so it doesn't count. how many events can you name with koreans and non-koreans where the koreans did not absolutely dominate?
your jaedong and flash example has nothing to do with anything. plus flash only played starcraft for 2 years before he won an OSL anyways.
also note "he VAST majority of my actions are deliberate decisions and not spam" is actually a bad thing. when i play, i don't 'decide' to macro its something my hands do whenever they're not otherwise busy spamming at all times puts you into a mindset of constantly doing more things which will lead to better play.
so yes. apm is massively important.
well said.
if you actually "think" what you do with your hands youre wasting huge amounts of time that could be spend on other things.
and btw people should def add if they are talking about ingame apm or real apm when using numbers...
APM does not mean top level playing skill, but without high apm at all, skill has a lower ceiling. I don't know how many times I've seen players lose stray mutalisks because they moved away from marines too late, or a player lose a handful of probes because of a slow micro away from hellions. With faster APM, those movements can be nigh instant, as one isn't cluttered by previous actions.
As it stands, one can get ahead with strategy and decision making while suffering from weak mechanics (note: Grrr...) but it feels only like a weakness to me. Not a debilitating one, but a weakness nonetheless.
High APM is extremely important in certain matchups in certain styles. How are you going to have your mutas active 24/7, constantly retake watchtowers, spread creep, not hvae idle larvae with anything under 180 or so sc2 APM (I want to say 250+ apm is optimal for zvt muta style against drop play).
I think the greatest advantage of higher than 100 APM (after near perfect macro) is the ability to respond multipromt harass and attacks fast enough. I know it too well from experience that with average 100-120 APM after a game (without excesive spamming) there are very many situations when I felt too slow.
I play random so its not a race related thing, but especially with protoss when I have to move screen away from the battle to a pylon to warp stuff in it feels so slow while not being able to micro my units for a long time. Same goes with responding to dropss while engaging in a battle elsewhere, with this limited action speed there are long periods of time when I'm just not fast enough to do all the things I know I need to do.
I generally try to priorize macro over micro, so going through the production cycle as terran during a battle or harass just takes so much time while I cannot respond in any way. for example: 4(rax) mmmmmmdd, 5(cc) ss, 6(factories) ss, 7(starport) dd, 8 ae (engineering bay) = 3-5 seconds
in this time I've lost tens of workers to banshees/blue flame hellions/ mutas/ templar drops.
Not to speak of the possibility to micro units better, I control my army with 3 hotkeys and still different types of units tend to be at wrong places. With more APM one could control smaller groups of units either with hotkeys or gosu mouse control. You can see lack of speed from progamers too in a lot of tournament games, they lose drops, workers, units in general because they are just not fast enough to control everything. Sure those losses are usually small, but everything counts in close games.
2 things from me. 1 silly one: InControls "clicky-ti-clack" keyboard is really notorious in itself on SotG for Example where I really wonder if Jp will get InControl that Mic Stand he treatens him with.
the other thing as I also absolutly hate the APM Spam at the Start its just "wasted time" in my Opinion and I usually use that Time to actually rerange my Workers to maximize Mining on the close Patches first anyway you brought up some great Points but I was a little surprised one thing came not up which I usually get confronted about when I talk about APM is the warming up Aspect.
now this has been literaly talked to death so I am not gonna start again, just saying that YES for some ppl it may Help to get their APM right at the start to smoother transition into a mid-game APM usage.
BUT I also say that for most ppl is just their measurement of the notorious EP.... also in the Pro Scene from the Caster side APM is one the thing that can Catch the crowds (see the APM measure Headsets used by GOM lol I love these things)
Also People need to difference the Total APM/ and current APM more each Bleep can Spam at the Start to get 200ish APM Total and guess what over the Course of there game even if only with 20 APM gets continued for the Rest of Time it will take some time for that number to go down again. so only the actuall APM is really notworthy.
the Footnote stands for non Pro Scene about 60+ APM for normal Unit-Game Control in ladder is perfectly fine. in the Heat of Battle APM spikes up is normal and Z seems to have always a little bit Higher APM for various Reasons.
nice Post there learned a few more more Point on the APM Debatte.
Reminds me of many tennis "is topspin overrated?" threads ahaha...
But no, I don't think APM is getting out of hand. You absolutely cannot do "everything" at high levels of play with low apm. There are a couple exceptions...even then though, it's these same people who sometimes struggle because of their lack of speed.
This is really ignorant. High APM is a requirement for good multitasking. If two players are playing a very scrappy game, then the person with higher APM is at a significant advantage. You see many players in the GSL having 300+ in-game APM for this reason.
Why do you think players like MarineKing and MVP are so good? They have amazing micro and multitasking which lets them outplay their opponents in the mid & late game. Multitasking is certainly not the only measure of skill but it is an important facet of it.
Watching Nada play is beautiful and makes you appreciate APM as opposed to useless spam. Sure, a lot of it is spam but as others have pointed out its more about getting in a rythm and warming up. During actual battles, you can see that he is constantly going through his production buildings and making stuff. That is where high APM shines. Note that Nada is famous for having introduced the new generation of 400 APM players in BW and as such will have some actions that arent useful in SC2 simply because the game is different. Imagine setting the rally point of buildings, rax hotkey-click fact hotkey click as opposed to f2 click f3 click for each single building.
In fencing, the highest level fencers don't stand there in en garde. They bounce. This is a super critical action even though it seems meaningless and exhausting. A bouncing fencers reaction speed is MUCH faster then a fencer who is standing there. This is part of why APM is important.
On March 05 2011 19:34 Mailing wrote: And only lower level players 'glorify' APM.
I would say that if you watch any GSL/IEM/MLG, the commentators really talk up the players APM, and I wouldn't count any of them as "lower level players"
This is completely false. I almost never hear any commentator glorify APM, especially Tastosis, Day9 etc... . And i've heard a lot of player like TLO say that they are more impressed when a player is doing good with low APM.
But anyway, high APM comes in majority from the fact that you are switching between your unit groups/production buildings all the time (spamming your keys for that) to check if something is building (and macro correctly), if you can do that, it will never be bad for you. Also, the spam at the beginning of the game is pretty harmless, its not like you are going to miss something by spamming, and it will warm your hand a little bit and help keeping the same pace during the whole game.
first of all i bet a platin player doesnt get near to 200 and second sc2 is a game where it is useless, since u can groups buildings together and get more units in 1 group, also for multitask u dont need 300 apm i would it is even worse for ur multitask, cause at the time where u spam u pass time where u could make action wich make sense.
Also, i think the hardest part of commentating games is probably the first 3-5 minutes. They need to talk about something during that time, and basically nothing happens. So they talk about the Map, or about the players, and maybe about their holidays or something like that. Or about APM, because that is simply the only thing in game that is actually happening. "Oh, he builds a pylon!" "No way, a pylon, for real? Never thought he would do that!"
On March 05 2011 21:23 WeRRa wrote:also for multitask u dont need 300 apm.
A multitasker with 300 APM is better than a "multitakser" with 100 APM, unless you're doing some turtle mech build or 2 base PvZ build where you just make gateway/voidray/collos until 200/200.
ANY normal game and the player with 300+ APM is, ceteris paribus, BETTER than the player with 150 APM. Imagine if you could play at 1000 APM. You will do everything the 150APM guy does, but your efficiency will be insane, your reaction to drops more efficient, your creepspread further, your overlord spread better, less idle larvae/productoin buildings, more harass.
It's exactly the same with the jump from 150APM to 300APM. This assumes that the APM isn't mindless spam, which 200+APM doesn't have to be (I play at this speed and never spam).
Higher APM is always better in the midgame+ unless it's spam APM. Low APM means that player is slow and inefficient, discluding some strategies that don't require any sort of high APM, such as strong turtle builds without drops or 2 base PvZ mass strategies.
iIs funny how this topic never gets old even after 10 years of RTS esport history. If you have around 150 SC2 APM without stupid spamming you will be fine at the pro level. The Key is being efficient with your APM, players like Stork are an example of how you can have "slow" APM relative to other progamers and yet be able to win an OSL and many trips to tournament finals than 99% progamers in history. Its about quality not quantity, look at Sjow and Duckoadra for example as well for players with slow apm.
Some people spam at the start to get warmed up or work off excess adrenaline, then you have people like Flash, Nestea and IMMVP who sips their drink or stretch during the first few seconds of the game anyone should know this if you actually follow and watch VODs.
I think of spamming at the beginning as more of a ritual, not warming up. Similar to how baseball players up at-bat will swing a few times before the pitch, or knock their toe on the ground, you follow a specific pattern of actions that will get you to a familiar mindset for the game. For some people that is APM spam, for others that is cracking their fingers/neck.
Its a psychological thing and is proven to improve focus and whatnot- not for Starcraft in particular but just for life in general. If you go from point A to B to C and that's what works best for you, better to always start at A with your spam clicking than starting with B.
People say that it "warms them up" but I'm pretty sure they mean this.
Think of mkp's marine heavy style.. to split/micro your marines that well while continuing to macro well, that requires high apm. High apm let's you pull off so many more strategies, gives you the upper hand in battle and most importantly let's you react quicker.
Low sub-150 apm players may be able to hang at the top level for now while the game is still young, but as the game evolves there will be far less players with low apm at the upper levels, if any.
On March 05 2011 21:30 bubblegumbo wrote: iIs funny how this topic never gets old even after 10 years of RTS esport history. If you have around 150 SC2 APM without stupid spamming you will be fine at the pro level. The Key is being efficient with your APM, players like Stork are an example of how you can have "slow" APM relative to other progamers and yet be able to win an OSL and many trips to tournament finals than 99% progamers in history. Its about quality not quantity, look at Sjow and Duckoadra for example as well for players with slow apm.
Some people spam at the start to get warmed up or work off excess adrenaline, then you have people like Flash, Nestea and IMMVP who sips their drink or stretch during the first few seconds of the game anyone should know this if you actually follow and watch VODs.
IIRC, Stork had stated he was raising his APM in an interview, sometime before his OSL victory (to like 300+? Which is average for Protoss progamers). Flash's APM is actually 350+, and still spams in the beginning so idk why you even mentioned him
I am high diamond (matched up against masters level players quite often, might be promoted even) and I have about 60 apm
it is actually something I really find mildly entertaining, watching an opponent I have destroyed have about 5 times greater apm at the beginning, then maintain a 2.5 times greater apm and still lose.
APM is a tool to get your multitasking done. What seperates the adepts from the vets is the ability to multitask. IE: doing multiple things at once, as quickly and as accurately as possible. High APM allows you to do that. There is nothing getting out of hand whatsoever.
I feel APM is way too overrated in SC2. Seriously. Decision making has a brutally large place in compared to EAPM for SC2. To clarify, EAPM will definitely make a player better; how can injecting larva at a more on-the-dot timing at the exact 25 mp mark be more harmful than not doing it as early? It's just that scouting and strategy make up for waaaay more importance in terms of deciding who's gonna win a game. SC2 is way too frickin' easy to play, the focus ought to be on experience in dealing with situations, timings and unit compositions. Look at SCBW. Someone with 200 APM can spam units that are hard countered by the unit type the one with 100 APM is mass producing and expect to win. There is simply way too much the 100 APM guy has on his hands before he can even handle micro if he wants to stay in the game. TL;DR Yes, APM is getting out of hand in its relative 'imagined' importance in SC2. Come on, people like incontrol who spam so hard in the beginning of the game don't even have APM like a B- or B on iCCup (look at npnl.fedOr). APM is super important in SC:BW, there is really no actual way someone with half EAPM of another can beat him. 1a2a3a4a5sh6sh7sh8sh as compared to 1a5srhrhrhrhrhrhrhrh.
On March 05 2011 19:31 FubsyGamr wrote: If you REALLY had 300 APM while in a battle, we should expect to see something along the lines of: Battle Starts - Engage - Build Marine - Build Tank - Build SCV - Build Sensor Tower - Expand - Pull back part of wounded army … in one second.
That would actually be 1380+ apm, not even counting moving the camera(or clicking minimap). (3)Engage: Click army control group, press A, left click into opponent army (4)Build Marine and tank: Click control group for barracks, press A, press tab, press S. (6)Sensor Tower: Select SCV, press B, press N, place it, hold shift, right click SCV back to minerals. (6)Expand: Select SCV, press B, press C, place it, hold shift, right click SCV to minerals. (4)Pull back parts of army: Double click army control group, select units, click back.
Being faster never hurts. APM is a box, skill is what you put in the box. If you have a huge empty box it's useless, but if you have a tiny box that's full and with stuff overflowing, that's not good either since you won't be able to do the stuff you know you should be doing.
All i know is that i am 3.3k masters random player with about 70-100apm. As long as you dont spam, thats enough. High apm doesnt equal good multitasking. Most of the time its just a sign for senseless spam. I am playing against people with 300+ apm and if i drop at several places at once or do speed prism harass, they totally collapse.
On March 05 2011 21:52 Grummler wrote: All i know is that i am 3.3k masters random player with about 70-100apm. As long as you dont spam, thats enough. High apm doesnt equal good multitasking. Most of the time its just a sign for senseless spam. I am playing against people with 300+ apm and if i drop at several places at once or do speed prism harass, they totally collapse.
On March 05 2011 21:38 DestroManiak wrote: I am high diamond (matched up against masters level players quite often, might be promoted even) and I have about 60 apm
it is actually something I really find mildly entertaining, watching an opponent I have destroyed have about 5 times greater apm at the beginning, then maintain a 2.5 times greater apm and still lose.
Obviously APM isn't the sole indicator of skill and is not the lone determinant of the outcome of a game but I can guarantee you that with 60 APM you will not make it into Masters.
Think of APM more as the frequency of which you scan through all the information on the screen. Higher APM means quicker reaction times and more efficient production with less queuing.
Also, the argument of "think of six things in a second" doesn't really make sense. Because you have a game planned, you don't have to come up with every action you do on the spot. "Count to six in a second" would be a better similie.
APM is important, but the APM needed in SC2 is way way lower than in BW. 300 SC2 APM (400 or so actual APM?) is highly unnecessary for SC2 but to assume you're going to get anywhere with 100 is preposterous. The actual necessary APM for SC2 is somewhere in the middle.
On March 05 2011 19:31 FubsyGamr wrote: In reality, I seriously doubt if any of us reading this post are even reading at 6 WORDS a second,
You need to re-evaluate your doubts.
Agreed. Skimming a post such as the OP is easily a line a second. While reading every word and doing basic analysis is somewhere around 5-6 words a second for me.
why the fuuck do people care so much man, i dont get it >_<
anyway.
APM is just how fast you are, nothing else. Some like to pick up speed from the start (see @ almost every BW player), some have it as a habit (me lol) and some dosnt (Goody.. but hes a kinda bad example:D).
Im of the opinion that it dosnt rly matter lol. You have stuff you need to do, if youre good u have A LOT of stuff to do (in a short amount of time), so to be able to do all of those things they are fast, or, they have a high APM.
Efficient apm is something else, but as someone already said, its easier to go from 350apm down to 200 than it is to go from 50 to 200.
It seems pointless to discuss APM or why people is spamming. I would compare it to asking someone why they wear coloured shoe laces or why they have their cap turned sideways. It's a trend, simple as that.
One can argue the pros and cons of doing it and while I agree that it can be a good mental preparation before jumping into a game, you won't get better by furiously spam buttons 1-5. That only comes through hours of practice and you will always try to be as fast as possible in intense situations anyway. You should rather practice your natural APM by playing vs an AI for example and train yourself on simultaneously doing as many things (macro, micro) as possible as fast as possible, by raising your natural APM you will defiantly get better on Starcraft.
You have to realize the dangers by repetitively punching buttons, it can cause severe repetitive strain injury's (RSI) or even worse (CTS) Carpal tunnel syndrome. I wouldn't for the life of me risk serious injuries and spam buttons just so that I can look good with a arbitrary number.
Well obviously APM doesn't mean the same for every race. I have noticed that each time I morph a bunch of banelings, my apm make a big jump because you need to spam to make the exact number of bane you need. A protoss/terran player don't need to do that. Obviously APM is very different for every race in starcraft2, with protoss being the one who need the lowest APM in my opinion. Well at 3k-3k5 master eu at least (I still see 60 apm protoss with 3k3).
i wish APM was never invented in the first place. why does it bother you at all? if you can win games, how does it matter to anybody? closing this thread.
EPT
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