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On September 11 2010 12:30 TMTurtle wrote:
Play better. Think more.. Your APM is not a restriction of your fingers or hands, but of your brain to think of what you should be doing.
edit: This comes off insulting, now that I look at it. That's not how I meant it. When you plan more and have a better sense of the game, the APM comes with it.
iGNORE this ^ guy. If you want high APM you want to think as little as possible. The more time you spend thinking, the less time you're spending doing.
After playing 9999999 games you will instinctively know (hopefully) what to do in the situation at hand and not having to think out what your next move is, but rather just doing what your next move is will bump your apm up.
Thinking in RTS is a waste of time. Doing > thinking.
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It really comes from just practicing more, but I find that passive play/getting too comfortable can be an obstacle people hit.
Just make sure you're always trying to do more in the game and to improve.
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Saying, "All the progamers have high APM, so I need high APM to be pro" is akin to saying, "Professional speed chess players play really fast; moving the pieces fast must be more important to my development than learning the game."
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Apm isn't important in sc2, i've seen plenty of great players with about 90. Also having high apm isn't about moving faster, it's about doying what you have to do in the correct order. Watch this: http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/3732340/
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On September 11 2010 15:24 Aeo wrote:
Saying, "All the progamers have high APM, so I need high APM to be pro" is akin to saying, "Professional speed chess players play really fast; moving the pieces fast must be more important to my development than learning the game."
very good analogy,
if you have apm under 50 though you need to work on being more active with what your doing in the game cause imo u can't really improve too much if you play under 50 apm because mid/late game requires a little more actions than that. other than that you really shouldnt worry bout apm until you've mastered the basic mechanics of the game and THEN maybe u can work on having 200+ apm.
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On September 11 2010 14:11 MICHELLE wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2010 12:55 Pfeff wrote:
APM is like DPS in world of warcraft. Higher doesn't always mean better; it's only useful if you are doing it correctly. If you do everything you are supposed to do your APM (or DPS) will shoot up by itself Are you really comparing APM to DPS? This dosent make ANY sence at all.
Yes, I am. APM is useless if you are doing it for the wrong reasons, just like DPS is useless if you are standing in a fire or tunnel visioning a boss (aka not injecting, macroing, etc...not doing the right things to increase said numbers)
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One way to increase your APM is to keep your mineral count at a certain level.
I learned when i was playing BW and it helped my game considerably
Just make sure you're using your minerals appropriately and your game will improve as a whole.
For BW my goal was to keep it under 300
As for SC2, does anyone have any suggestions?
I'm thinking keeping it under 500 seems reasonable. I play zerg btw.
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Well my 2 cents is:
First off, Identify what you believe to be the cause of your APM 'lacking'.
Is it mental or physical or both?
If it's mental then its more likely an experience thing and you need to play more. An example would be things like putting guys in gas should be second nature, you shouldn't have to think about it. Keeping tabs on your resources and watching the minimap constantly are usually points where people lack.
Sometimes its just a lack of coordination. In very rare cases some people just are not cut out for gaming in general. Good hands, i.e fluid keyboard movement and pristine mouse control are paramount.
I'll stop here to save myself and wasted words since your original post is not really descriptive as to what the root of your problem is.
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Guis ... why are u always so focused on APM?
It is just a frakking metric for handspeed and nothing else ...
Decent players tend to have high APM, but players with high APM are not necessarily decent players.
e.g. Triathlon athletes have low heart rate (huge heart), but having a low heart rate doesn't make u a Tri-Athlete.
I think u get my point. High APM is just a by-product that appears as u get better.
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you ego is showing Your thought process is backwards, apm comes from winning not the other way around. Sure mashing / spamming hotkeys will make you sleep better at night, and give you something to post about XD, but the truth is that apm doesn't mean D I C K. Idra is arguably the best zerg in the world and he averages around 150 apm. Focus on learning, not winning, not apm, learning. Try to learn one thing from every game you play. It could be as simple as "scout more", or it could be... if i do build A and he does build B, then at 11 minutes into the game i will have an advantage and i should put on pressure, tech, or expand.
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On September 11 2010 14:11 MICHELLE wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2010 12:55 Pfeff wrote:
APM is like DPS in world of warcraft. Higher doesn't always mean better; it's only useful if you are doing it correctly. If you do everything you are supposed to do your APM (or DPS) will shoot up by itself Are you really comparing APM to DPS? This dosent make ANY sence at all.
Where he really went wrong was when he started to use a WoW analogy for Starcraft...
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APM is 100% muscle memory. you develop high apm through repetition and mastery of your mechanics. most people should probably be able to reach 100 with enough practice, but progressing beyond that is mostly god given hand speed.
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Anybody with fingers can have an APM of 1000+ just by mashing their keyboard. The limit on your APM is your ability to think about everything you have to be doing. Just by playing the game, my APM went from 60-80 to 120-140. Things to think about which will require a high APM to accomplish:
1) Workers - Keep producing them w/o using the queue.
2) Supply - Try to never get supply blocked.
3) Macro - Make sure everything is constantly being produced from. Again, no queuing.
4) Army - Periodically toggle to your army and move them close to your opponent to scout and maintain map control.
As you become more comfortable with each of these skills, it will become second nature, so your mind will automatically work on other things. If you want to try to actively increase your APM, make it a goal of yours to fix one of these at a time. When you become comfortable with that, move on to something else.
I disagree with the belief that APM doesn't equal skill. If you are doing more things, then you are playing better. The more you play, the better your APM gets. Mine almost doubled with literally no attention to it.
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First of all apm is not analogous to dps. If you want to incorporate a WoW term, apm is more along the lines of gearscore. At face value, it means nothing. If a player has a 6k gear score (for those who don't play WoW, this is pretty high) this could mean 1 of 2 things. 1. He is a bad ass. 2. He got carried through the latest content and is actually not that skilled.
This goes the same for apm; if you see in a replay a player has 300 apm, this could also mean 1 of 2 things: 1. Those 300 actions per minute were mostly effective actions and this player has very good control and macro. 2. He hotkeyed random units and just facerolled the keyboard.
tl;dr: nominal apm (and gearscore) is an empty container. The only way to fill it is with effective non-spam actions.
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I really love the chess analogy, and thank you soo much for the link to this day9 daily.
I appreciate all the help guys.
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first of all your apm is really low, you should be able to get it to 80-100 just by trying harder
37-50 is just really casual and lazy.
after that dont bother with it anymore, it will gradually increase when you get better. don't spam, its useless.
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Well, I am certainly not a diamond player writer. I promise you there is hardly anything casual or lazy about my gameplay.
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The long and short of it is, your APM is only a good indication of how good you are, if the majority of those are useful actions.
If you have 150 apm, and you're spending the entirety of that macroing, teching, expanding, scouting, and microing your army, then you're in fantastic shape.
If you have 150 apm and got about 120 of that from spamming because everyone else spams, then you're only really playing with about 30 real actions per.
You need a justifiable reason for spamming. It helps if you're constantly checking and rechecking energy on caster units, or keeping a close eye on build times, but it needs to actually do something for you, or that's just wasted actions.
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Try playing Zerg for a bit. By the time you've scouted with your ovies, laid your tumors, injected, built, expoed, and are running your forces around the map you'll realize just how much there is to do in this game. Zerg just plain has more things to keep up with.
It's really a matter of realizing all the things you should be doing that increases your APM, and Zerg just has more to do. Good way to get used to it.
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I just kept playing as my favorite race (Zerg FTW!!!!! For the Swarm  ), and eventually my apm went up from like 60 to 100. It went up slowly though, like in the course of a few weeks. I say practice your builds so you have an internal clock that tells you when to build your tech structures/attack/etc. then try to think outside the box of what you could be doing.
Zerg does require a LOT of apm imho. Injections, expansions, scouting Terran which is near impossible, scouting that two-gate and building a roach warren asap, etc... *groan**flashback**shiver*
It'sexactly like what Terranist said. ^^^^^^^^^
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EPT
