I am TheKingRoc, an avid follower of Starcraft 2 and eSports, and am diamond on the NA ladder.
Often when I listen to professional players or commentators, they seem to make a connection between the speed at which a player is able to complete a task and their Actions Per Minute; the purpose of this post is to debunk this myth, and provide a more accurate description and metric for a players ACT (more on this later). I will also provide some simple neurological techniques that can help any player with 15 minutes to increase those same numbers.
1. This post will not help you to increase your APM, and may even decrease it.
2. This post is not related to any specific strategy, and should not be viewed as a tool to help you beat other players. This guide is here to make you more efficient with the keyboard and mouse.
3. This post contains fairly technical terminology. No prior knowledge is required to comprehend all written information, and I do try to be very concise and transparent, but please take the time to understand everything outlined before bashing in the comments section.
4. This post is in numerous areas may not technically coincide with relevant scientific research. Many things were changed in order to make the subject matter more apparent in it's relevance to Starcraft, please understand that all of the concepts are indeed concurrent with preexisting scientific data.
Most people know the answer to this question; your Actions per Minute in Starcraft 2 is the amount of times you depress a key with a relevant hotkey, right click, or left click every 1.39 minutes.
Layman's terms: How fast you hit the keyboard and mouse.
ACT, or action completion time, is the amount of time (generally measured in milliseconds) is the time it takes an individual to mentally process a set of instructions and physically complete a relevant action. This is actually split in to two metrics ACT and PCT (Process Completion Time) but for the sake of comprehension, this post will be categorizing both as the former.
ACT is made up of your MCT and PCT.
Layman's terms: How long it takes you to do a specific task.
The speed at which a player's hand is able to move from a starting point to a desired destination; this should be metricized with three to five point times (this is basically measuring how long it takes your hand to go from a key to another in milliseconds; generally QP, AL, Z>, QM, and ZP are used as starting points and desired destinations), but this in a practical sense cannot be done to a highly accurate degree.
Layman's terms: How fast your hands can move from one place to another on the keyboard.
This is a bit more complicated. Mental Classification Time (MCT) is the time it takes for your brain to pick up a stimuli from your senses (the pixels that you identify as a Thor, for example), send it through your mental decision making process, decide upon a response (lets say this is a magic box), and send the relevant actions required to complete that same response to a selected grouping of muscles. Sometimes, this response is no response.
MCT is half of what makes your ACT.
Layman's terms: The time it takes your brain to process information, and tell your hands to do something with it.
The time it takes your fingers and hands to complete the tasks assigned to them by your brain. This includes all actions required to get to the point where you can complete the task (sometimes the human brain fucks this step up) and the actual completion of the task itself.
PCT is the other half of your ACT (not literally half, just for simplicity's sake).
Layman's terms: How long your fingers take to do what your brain says.
To answer this question, let's first recall what APM is: How many times you hit the keyboard and mouse in about a minute. Now, you also need to realize that for the entire duration of a SC2 match, all you do is create and complete these little, short tasks; you do it hundreds of times each and every game. Therefore, using common sense, we can deduce APM is actually a measure of [(Number of completed tasks * average actions included per task) completed per 1.39 minutes], which makes it basically a rough measure of how many tasks you assign yourself. You can't really improve this number (it's pretty much defined by how mentally "quick" you are; if you can find a way to make yourself smarter, be sure to tell me), and you definitely don't want to increase the length of each task, so APM is down the shitter as far as a measure of speed. APM is a poor and inconsistent measure of hand speed, because many players do not utilize the entirety of their handspeed (none are required to) for a significant portion of the game, so APM sucks again here. The only real use for APM would be to measure the MCT and PCT (moreso the PCT) of one player against the other; keep in mind this statistic is really, really skewed as well, because of that same lack of full mental and physical application across the board for the whole duration of measurement.
How individual or compiled ACT is a better measure, even if there isn't really a way to measure it: + Show Spoiler +
In simple and perfectly adequate terms, ACT is a more specific measure of your speed, with better delimiters and no possible inaccuracy. The reasoning behind this is that ACT is a very small-scale measurement (generally used to find only the speed of three or four events in sequence) that inaccuracies are unlikely, because you're not comparing 15 minutes of data versus 15 minutes of data. ACT is your "true" speed, in the sense that it measures the timeliness in which you can begin and finish just about any task. In SC, we can use ACT on a larger scale to measure tasks commonly required for effective macro, like making an SCV, but more on that later.
Like nearly everything a human does, the only way to improve the speed at which one completes any particular action is to complete that action a batrillion times. In essence, every task that you want to do faster, you have to do a lot to do faster (I apologize for that sentence). However, not all practice is truly efficient. For instance, if you load up a ladder game and try to do everything required for good macro, drop, and micro and the same time, your brain will learn how to do all of those things at a much slower rate, and the acquired knowledge will not independently assort; this basically means that you learn things in the context of other things, and if you don't do those other things you suck at the thing you learned. Therefore, the best way to learn any particular task is to take it to the smallest level, and surround it with itself. So, to put that into english: if you make thirty SCVs in a row you know how to make SCVs better than if you, say, make 15 SCVs, a marine, then 15 more SCVs. Make your goal to isolate problem areas where your fingers fumble (this is where we start to apply some of those far away definitions), and work on completing those motions a million times. Let's say that you have a problem double tapping your two hotkey, then your 1 hotkey, and queuing a probe. You should work on doing those exact motions repetitively to best isolate the problem and train your fingers to quickly complete the motion. Make sure to iron out all of the really obvious keystroke problems you have, before moving on to the MCT area. It's also extremely beneficial to practice making quick responses to stimuli in the game to decrease your MCT: load up a few custom games, and tell a friend to do a different 6:30 push ever game. Scout, and try to read the information and make the correct decisions to defend the push every time. Truly, the best practice for improving your ACT is to be consistently aware of stutters in your process; if you know you have to do something but can't seem to get to it, there's a PCT problem and you should fix it by repetition. Watch your replays; if you see that you could have better defended a push, make sure you know the correct responses and properly execute them; one key factor in a good MCT is familiarity with the desired response. Always be sure to know what to do; if you don't, than go read the rest of the strategy forum before finishing this post
Do I need to measure my ACT in order to improve it? Hell, what am I actually improving?
No! Knowledge of the defintion of ACT (or any controllable statistic, for that matter) is enough to positively effect your ACT. It does help, however, to know that you can affect three key areas that make up ACT: PCT, MCT, and indirectly, PIT (These terms are all defined above). Every time you increase the speed at which you preform an action, you are almost positively decreasing the length of all three of these things independently of one another. It's also good to know that up to around 275 SC2 APM, an increase in a consistently present action like the production of an SCV will reflect in your APM. The reasoning for this is that for the majority of the mid and late game, you have tasks that make it through the MCT phase, but are bumped off at the PCT phase because of the limited queue of the physical reflex (sorry about how french that probably sounds).
[i]You don't give APM enough credit. The top pros all have 300 APM, and you need it to be fast enough to macro effectively!
The reason I say APM is invalid is again because it is a [i]product of your ACT. Please, go read the "Why APM is useless" section again, and notice how APM can be simplified to a formula where the only variables are in direct correlation to ACT; the top pros all have 300 APM because they process a hell of a lot of tasks in a hella short time (this is particularly true for BW). This requires high hand speed which, when fully utilized, produces APM.
The Fact is, you don't need to have all of the extra translation required and risk for misinterpretation that APM has inherently, when it really tells you nothing except for a players handspeed. Again, even that statistic is likely invalid, because the vast majority of players do not use the entirety of their handspeed for the entirety of the measurable period.
This post Resereved for the eventual link to the "How To Improve Thread" and the link to its discussion on
"Execution Speed"
Edit-
ACT is just another name for Execution Speed, right?
Execution speed is a factor that really di erentiates pros from amateurs and others from those a level or few lower, yet it is scarcely talked about at all
Execution Speed The most important area of multitasking is that of execution speed. Execution speed is a factor that really di erentiates pros from amateurs and others from those a level or few lower, yet it is scarcely talked about at all. The easiest way to understand is with a demonstration. Take for example mid to lategame TvZ, right after swarm is out and the Zerg is busy securing their 4th gas. During this period one approach is to pressure the Zerg enough so that the Zerg makes a mistake or leaves an opening that can be exploited. Should the Terran not do any damage before the Zerg can start pumping out 4 gas ultra/ling, the Terran ends up at a mild to severe disadvantage. Ergo the Terran will naturally march around between various points of entry throwing irradiates, killing isolated units and sunkens, sieging up, and dropping the 3rd or the main. The primary factor in deciding victory in this scenario is which side is faster. If you want proof, go through the best pro TvZ'ers and look at their games in this section of the game. In virtually every single example you will be unable to point to more than a few second window (at most) where their army is idle. Some infantry may be providing scourge cover for Vessels to irradiate a de ler or lurkers, other infantry might be denying an expansion or forcing a dark swarm, but something is always happening. What is more, the Terran army never sits still even if it is not attacking. It provides pressure by moving constantly, forcing the Zerg to be uncertain to the timing and intentions of his opponent. If the Zerg is not prepared for the speed of the Terran's movements, some aspect of their defense will be open and they will either die or get crippled. So not only is it important to be able to initiate the movements at a non-stop rate, but you also must be able to react to high-speed movements as well. If not, that very same Terran player might nd themselves victim to a terrifying plague or ank that just came a second earlier than they expected. When you look at games of weaker players in the above scenario, you'll see how their armies stop moving quite often, they don't make enough threats, they don't put on enough pressure; in fact, they just seem to sit around often. Without the direct pro comparison it doesn't seem that abnormal, but the di erence between an army sitting in the middle and an army ghting on your doorstep is worlds apart to the opponent. Should you pit that slower amateur against a pro, the pro could simply win, irregardless of every other skill, simply by striking faster and more often than his opponent is prepared to handle. Execution speed is often the factor in many losses attributed to other causes. Think back to some of the games that you might have lost where the deciding factor was that swarm blocking a winning attack at the last moment, that Terran army that attacks too quickly and emps your arbiter a second before you are ready to strike, or the Protoss army that attacks out of the black and crushes your hydralisks because you didn't have the time to organize them for battle. Once you get to a (not particularly high) level where everyone has great macro, everybody's micro is solid, and awareness is nice, execution speed is the main mechanical skill that di erentiates great from good. Improving this all-important attribute is going to be gradual, and oftentimes enough from the results 18of improving the rest of your skills. Practicing with a concentrated e ort to move your armies faster and faster will obviously help propel this along, but that alone will not do it. In order to increase the speed and e ectiveness of your attacks, you will also need to have the knowledge of what kind of movement, where to move, and when to move all down subconsciously. This will be acquired both from studying progames and from your own experience. Lastly, one nal approach that may help is playing from the other point of view. A Terran player working on ZvT or vice versa is a particularly great case because of how important execution speed and reaction is in both sides of that matchup. By doing this, you will get to experience directly just how important execution speed is. You will lose many times over to those mm that strike right before your defense is entirely setup, or the lurker/ling that rams into your natural under swarm while you are still assembling your army. An even greater way to experience this factor and gain insight on how to improve your own play, short of ndng a practice partner of much higher skill, is to play against a team melee team. As one person is always controlling the army, it will be abundantly clear how much bene t they reap simply from always being able to move their forces faster than you have experienced. As we can see every mechanical aspect requires both knowing what to do and actually doing it. One is a knowledge component gained from both experience and careful studying of pros, the other is a mechan- ical/subconscious component gained purely from experience. Of all the mechanical skills, multitasking is the most dependant on experience and repitition. The shortcuts come from knowing what to do; the rest depends on doing the same things over and over and slowly optimizing them. Multitasking requires: 1. Understanding exactly what you are doing and why (study/experience) 2. Becoming so familiar with every action that the process becomes subconscious (practice) 3. Optimizing your actions to focus on the most important while ignoring the trivial (experience) 4. Becoming extremely aware of the minimap (practice/experience) 5. Force yourself to become faster by playing against opponents who punish you severely if you don't (practice) 6. Improving your execution speed (study, experience, practice
APM spamming helps you get incrediably familiar with your keyboard making ACT very short. APM in my opinion is still a very important determinate of skill, thats why almost all top pros in korea are 300+. MCT however is very important and different category all togeather but i still dont see any of this information making APM irrelevent by any means.
I think you're downplaying APM too much. APM is more or less how quickly you can get your strategies going. Multitasking and APM goes hand in hand, you can't do one well without doing the other well. Spotting 2 drops doesn't mean you can keep up with both of them and defend with minimal losses, despite knowing exactly how to do it in your head. Same goes with the person dropping.
Nada said APM is "how quick you can draw your picture in game with a keyboard and mouse." Pretty effin important picture if you ask me.
edit: and yeah only good for masters+ I guess :3. I always forget to think about leagues lower than where I'm at sorry :T
I think you're going to find a very strong correlation b/t vAPM and your FOTM "ACT".
This is like saying... Guys! Don't use measure pitches in mph! Measure it as travel time from pitcher's mound to home plate! MPH is (mostly) worthless as an indicator of a pitcher's throwing power! It's all about the travel time you see.
so the solution is to play and practise areas of specific weakness i dont know if this radical concept will take on it just as ridiculous as using ur keyboard and mouse rather than just the mouse.
I strongly suspect paying attention to APM is a waste of time unless you are Masters or higher. Im a high diamond and my APM in most games is in the 30s or 40s. Actually never in the 50s. I beat people on 200APM and deduce that these guys are spamming and havent devised gameplans or execution as good as mine.
Cool post, definitely made me think about how I was practicing. I have always felt massing ladder games are not really great for improving my terrible mechanics because there are so many mechanics to practice my brain is overwhelmed and nothing really improves.
zactic dislikes these kind of threads, and somehow after his rants, more and more of them pop up,hahaha, it's like people trying to piss him off or something p.s. nice post
Yeah what bio tech said. Until you can utilize your APM, it's not important. But I belive at the highest levels, pushing yourselfto play faster is important, and the only measurable way to do this is APM. APM is an important tool of self improvement (if you don't lie toyourself that spamming is making you faster.
APM helps your hands move faster and complete the mental checklists (injecting larvae, making units etc.) So I think it is important.
In my mind, if you have enough apm, you can cycle through your mental checklist faster and don't have to think about timings as much. For example, you have 4 hatches with 4 queens and their injects aren't lined up. If your apm is high, you will just cycle through each one every few seconds and inject (whether inject is ready or not). This takes out the mental load of remembering the timings of your injects. It's solving a problem with your hands instead of your brain so you can focus on other parts of the game. That's why I work on APM or whatever definition you would give this :p
On August 01 2011 14:53 Krayze wrote: APM helps your hands move faster and complete the mental checklists (injecting larvae, making units etc.) So I think it is important.
In my mind, if you have enough apm, you can cycle through your mental checklist faster and don't have to think about timings as much. For example, you have 4 hatches with 4 queens and their injects aren't lined up. If your apm is high, you will just cycle through each one every few seconds and inject (whether inject is ready or not). This takes out the mental load of remembering the timings of your injects. It's solving a problem with your hands instead of your brain so you can focus on other parts of the game. That's why I work on APM or whatever definition you would give this :p
Aha! This is the key thing that most people don't understand. When you say having enough APM allows you to "cycle through your mental checklist and [not] have to think about think about timing as much", you mean to say "Having a faster MCT on many key points in a macro cycle allows you to macro more efficiently without having to worry about the minutiae.
I know it seems like a subtle difference, but try to understand that macroing faster and playing faster in general is a result of having a faster overall ACTs; having higher APM is a symptom of that.
On August 01 2011 14:16 cristo1122 wrote: so the solution is to play and practise areas of specific weakness i dont know if this radical concept will take on it just as ridiculous as using ur keyboard and mouse rather than just the mouse.
I don't understand if this is humorous or not, but it is generally more conductive to mechanical improvement and keyboard accuracy to practice everything as independently as possible, yes.
This thread cycles around every month or so. As bonerificus and the rest of the educated world says: APM is the byproduct of expedient playing. It is not something you should try to increase for the sake of itself. You should be practicing on execution speed or ability completion time or macroing, however the current flavor is labeled, it's still the same great strawberry ice cream that is playing gosu.
People that worry about their APM are people that are either at the very top or in divisions they would rather not disclose. Seeing how the real improvement is execution speed..
You know what no, I can't do this. This thread comes around too often. gg.
On August 01 2011 14:18 R3demption wrote: Cool post, definitely made me think about how I was practicing. I have always felt massing ladder games are not really great for improving my terrible mechanics because there are so many mechanics to practice my brain is overwhelmed and nothing really improves.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks so much!
A humongous problem with trying to grind whole games of Starcraft 2 is the lack of isolation - like you said, it "overloads" your brain in a way; your subconscious is, in simple terms, very easily distracted. Rarely will you be able to perfect keystrokes and physical movements to the point of "muscle memory" without individually practicing that motion, because you'll just never be able to get through the entirety of the motion without thinking ahead to whatever you need to be doing next.
To be very specific, this prevents nerves in your fingertips from associating positions on the keyboard in sequence with an instruction from your brain. You'll always have the commands "muddled" to some point; often this can lead to things like building two Cybernetics Cores rather than a Cybernetics Core and a Twilight Council. These structures are associated with common traits (tech, upgrade, etc.) and if not properly isolated the building of which can often enter the muscle memory stage "incorrectly".
On August 01 2011 15:07 Probe1 wrote: This thread cycles around every month or so. As bonerificus and the rest of the educated world says: APM is the byproduct of expedient playing. It is not something you should try to increase for the sake of itself. You should be practicing on execution speed or ability completion time or macroing, however the current flavor is labeled, it's still the same great strawberry ice cream that is playing gosu.
People that worry about their APM are people that are either at the very top or in divisions they would rather not disclose. Seeing how the real improvement is execution speed..
You know what no, I can't do this. This thread comes around too often. gg.
I don't really talk about the same things that are talked about every time. I think I go much more in-depth as to the reasoning behind the invalidity of trying to raise APM than others ever did. I also think I took a more guided approach to helping players who want to increase their speed, without telling them to spam.
Execution speed is a term that actually refers only to what is referred to in the article as PCT; MCT is a whole different beast and something that no one has talked about in the past, to my knowledge.
To me, APM has always seemed more of how many things you can keep track of, more than a measurement of physical ability. I've definitely found that isolating the problem, like you mention in your OP, to absolutely help me. Like Day9 says, making things automatic drastically frees up my mind to think about things that require more of my focus, like decision making or micro-ing. To this end, I've taken to opening up blank Notepad documents when I'm at work and just spamming hotkeys and sequences (I'm T, so 5s5s4a4a4a3s3s3s557bs115s5s etc). Practicing this automaticity frees up some space in my brain to process scouting information, tactics, etc. Obviously, I have a long way to go, but I've definitely found myself forgetting fewer things and keeping up my macro, and gradually increasing my APM as I've gotten better at doing things automatically and focusing on other things.
TLDR: I absolutely agree with your "isolate the problem and focus on it" adage. I open up a blank text files at work and spam hotkey combinations I know I need to do in-game to practice and it's definitely helped me a ton.
On August 01 2011 14:14 Emperor_Earth wrote: What the...? I don't even...
I think you're going to find a very strong correlation b/t vAPM and your FOTM "ACT".
This is like saying... Guys! Don't use measure pitches in mph! Measure it as travel time from pitcher's mound to home plate! MPH is (mostly) worthless as an indicator of a pitcher's throwing power! It's all about the travel time you see.
There is a clear correlation between a player's ACT on several frequent tasks, and their APM. I said something along those lines, if you read the post...
One thing the OP tries to illustrate is how APM is a product of good ACTs, rather than APM being a valuable stastistic to raise on it's own. I don't really think the difference is anything like the one illustrated in your metaphor.
Unfortunately, as smart as this post is, until there is a measurable metric for how to compare ACT between players, people are going to cling to the old model of APM simply because it's familiar. It's obvious to any broodwar fan that APM isn't everything -- Flash is hands down the best starcraft player and he's not even close to being the highest APM player. Despite his lower average APM though, I'd feel quite comfortable saying that flash's ACT is significantly faster than probably every other player -- his processing speed, decision-making, and execution is often flawless.
I'd suggest editing your post to remove the controversial claim that APM is "useless", you're going to get a hundred people in here arguing why it isn't who didn't even read what you wrote.
On August 01 2011 15:14 whoopingchow wrote: To me, APM has always seemed more of how many things you can keep track of, more than a measurement of physical ability. I've definitely found that isolating the problem, like you mention in your OP, to absolutely help me. Like Day9 says, making things automatic drastically frees up my mind to think about things that require more of my focus, like decision making or micro-ing. To this end, I've taken to opening up blank Notepad documents when I'm at work and just spamming hotkeys and sequences (I'm T, so 5s5s4a4a4a3s3s3s557bs115s5s etc). Practicing this automaticity frees up some space in my brain to process scouting information, tactics, etc. Obviously, I have a long way to go, but I've definitely found myself forgetting fewer things and keeping up my macro, and gradually increasing my APM as I've gotten better at doing things automatically and focusing on other things.
TLDR: I absolutely agree with your "isolate the problem and focus on it" adage. I open up a blank text files at work and spam hotkey combinations I know I need to do in-game to practice and it's definitely helped me a ton.
This is a great way to practice, and a lot more convenient to a lot of people (like you said, all you need is wordpad ). One thing I would like to say, however, is that having relevant visual cues is very important to maintaining a good speed throughout the initiation and completion of a task.
One thing I don't talk about above is a space between mental interpretation and physical action. There is a short period where your nerves have to find a starting point, and if you practice too much without receiving the stimuli you would in a regular game, this time begins to increase dramatically (this is for a lot of reasons that would take quite a while to explain, PM me if you're really interested)!
On August 01 2011 15:18 integral wrote: Unfortunately, as smart as this post is, until there is a measurable metric for how to compare ACT between players, people are going to cling to the old model of APM simply because it's familiar. It's obvious to any broodwar fan that APM isn't everything -- Flash is hands down the best starcraft player and he's not even close to being the highest APM player. Despite his lower average APM though, I'd feel quite comfortable saying that flash's ACT is significantly faster than probably every other player -- his processing speed, decision-making, and execution is often flawless.
I'd suggest editing your post to remove the controversial claim that APM is "useless", you're going to get a hundred people in here arguing why it isn't who didn't even read what you wrote.
Everything you say is correct, in my opinion. I've had the privilege of seeing a couple FPVoDs of Flash, and I can tell you the speed at which he reacts to what he sees is mind blowing.
As to your suggestion, I'm perfectly content discussing peoples views for days, as long as they stay open to new ideas and are willing to listen to what I propose. If it gets too bad, I promise I'll remove that statement
On August 01 2011 15:18 integral wrote: Unfortunately, as smart as this post is, until there is a measurable metric for how to compare ACT between players, people are going to cling to the old model of APM simply because it's familiar. It's obvious to any broodwar fan that APM isn't everything -- Flash is hands down the best starcraft player and he's not even close to being the highest APM player. Despite his lower average APM though, I'd feel quite comfortable saying that flash's ACT is significantly faster than probably every other player -- his processing speed, decision-making, and execution is often flawless.
I'd suggest editing your post to remove the controversial claim that APM is "useless", you're going to get a hundred people in here arguing why it isn't who didn't even read what you wrote.
I don't want to sound like an ass but it's already been said a couple of times. No one really cares about apm, there's not really a need to write a whole thread about it.
I can comfortably play at 200+ apm the first 5-7 minutes of a game, as can most people. Everyone knows that apm in the beginning is all spam. If i lose to a silly cheese, herp derp, my apm was clearly not indicative of my ability to play well. Thus apm is clearly not a good measure of skill in that regard. However there is still a STRONG correlation between apm and skill, which is obviously why there is hype concerning it.
On August 01 2011 15:28 yiodee wrote: OP nailed it, if you disagree with the content of his post at any moment you need to go back and read it again until you fully understand it.
On August 01 2011 15:29 phiinix wrote: I don't want to sound like an ass but it's already been said a couple of times. No one really cares about apm, there's not really a need to write a whole thread about it.
I can comfortably play at 200+ apm the first 5-7 minutes of a game, as can most people. Everyone knows that apm in the beginning is all spam. If i lose to a silly cheese, herp derp, my apm was clearly not indicative of my ability to play well. Thus apm is clearly not a good measure of skill in that regard. However there is still a STRONG correlation between apm and skill, which is obviously why there is hype concerning it.
obvious obvious obvious.
The pieces of the OP regarding APM and the invalidity of the relevant statistic are really there to prevent possible confusion and provide a basis point for ACT, a metric I'm sure most aren't familiar with.
As far as I know, no one has gone in-depth regarding ACT or the relevant components, no one has consolidated fair and accurate definitions for terms that are frequently thrown around a lot (in the context of very technical terminology), and no one has provided some of the advice and background information regarding isolation like I did.
Please don't call the whole OP obvious without reading the whole op
On August 01 2011 15:14 whoopingchow wrote: To me, APM has always seemed more of how many things you can keep track of, more than a measurement of physical ability. I've definitely found that isolating the problem, like you mention in your OP, to absolutely help me. Like Day9 says, making things automatic drastically frees up my mind to think about things that require more of my focus, like decision making or micro-ing. To this end, I've taken to opening up blank Notepad documents when I'm at work and just spamming hotkeys and sequences (I'm T, so 5s5s4a4a4a3s3s3s557bs115s5s etc). Practicing this automaticity frees up some space in my brain to process scouting information, tactics, etc. Obviously, I have a long way to go, but I've definitely found myself forgetting fewer things and keeping up my macro, and gradually increasing my APM as I've gotten better at doing things automatically and focusing on other things.
TLDR: I absolutely agree with your "isolate the problem and focus on it" adage. I open up a blank text files at work and spam hotkey combinations I know I need to do in-game to practice and it's definitely helped me a ton.
i want to start practicing like this. what's the most optimal hotkey setups? also, should i use my pinky on a(attack, marine)?
On August 01 2011 15:37 AustinCM wrote: APM is and always will be a tool for measuring mechanical skill in the game such as multitasking and over all speed (Micro/Macro)
On August 01 2011 15:14 whoopingchow wrote: To me, APM has always seemed more of how many things you can keep track of, more than a measurement of physical ability. I've definitely found that isolating the problem, like you mention in your OP, to absolutely help me. Like Day9 says, making things automatic drastically frees up my mind to think about things that require more of my focus, like decision making or micro-ing. To this end, I've taken to opening up blank Notepad documents when I'm at work and just spamming hotkeys and sequences (I'm T, so 5s5s4a4a4a3s3s3s557bs115s5s etc). Practicing this automaticity frees up some space in my brain to process scouting information, tactics, etc. Obviously, I have a long way to go, but I've definitely found myself forgetting fewer things and keeping up my macro, and gradually increasing my APM as I've gotten better at doing things automatically and focusing on other things.
TLDR: I absolutely agree with your "isolate the problem and focus on it" adage. I open up a blank text files at work and spam hotkey combinations I know I need to do in-game to practice and it's definitely helped me a ton.
i want to start practicing like this. what's the most optimal hotkey setups? also, should i use my pinky on a(attack, marine)?
It matters almost none what "setup" you use. Frankly, if you can get used to custom hotkeys, do, and bind everything to Q-T. The less distance your hand travels, the better.
More importantly, just stay consistent. It is imperative that when you begin working intently on finger speed and accuracy, you do not change your hotkeys; all of your work will be lost. Also, be sure not to practice for more than 3 to 4 minutes, as the benefits begin to really fall off.
I like this post. There is so much discussion on these boards about APM, but it is simply an averaged number from a whole game that can last 20+ minutes long. Consider the 100m race, the equivalent of APM would be average speed, but go to any track/fitness board and people will break it down into the start, the acceleration, peak velocity and speed endurance, and discuss the secondary training exercises for developing each aspect
Similarly, it makes sense to break starcraft down into tasks that can be analyzed separately. Given its non-linear nature, there's also that element of mental processing, which you assign to MCT, which I believe is the most critical.
For instance, if we consider the task of injecting larvae, first we consider the few different methods available and choose one that requires relatively few actions and mental attention required to execute. I think something like this can be learned very quickly, and can be brought to less than a few seconds within a few practice sessions if drilled properly. However, the ability to recognize that a larva injection is due while under various game circumstances is much more difficult. Basically you're presented with a variety of stimuli from the game, and your mind has to identify, classify, prioritize then make decisions on what to do and execute.
As for your suggestion on improving MCT time, I would say that instead trying to use a more open-ended training method (playing games where your opponent varies his builds), it is probably quite beneficial to play many games where he does the same build over and over. My reasoning for this is as follows: Suppose you work on defending a 2 rax opening with a hatch first build. By repeating the same scenario over and over again, with the same input stimuli (the 2 rax), you can refine your response so that you feel confident about the situation. For instance, how many drones do you pull? When do you pull them? Where do you engage? How many lings to make? Do you need a spine crawler? When do you get your gas? etc. With systematic practice, you'll know what your answer is to all of those questions, so you won't have to think at all in that situation. Once you get thrown into an open-ended situation when your opponent can do anything, not having to think about what decisions to make is going to make you seem like you make them much faster.
As for your suggestion on improving MCT time, I would say that instead trying to use a more open-ended training method (playing games where your opponent varies his builds), it is probably quite beneficial to play many games where he does the same build over and over. My reasoning for this is as follows: Suppose you work on defending a 2 rax opening with a hatch first build. By repeating the same scenario over and over again, with the same input stimuli (the 2 rax), you can refine your response so that you feel confident about the situation. For instance, how many drones do you pull? When do you pull them? Where do you engage? How many lings to make? Do you need a spine crawler? When do you get your gas? etc. With systematic practice, you'll know what your answer is to all of those questions, so you won't have to think at all in that situation. Once you get thrown into an open-ended situation when your opponent can do anything, not having to think about what decisions to make is going to make you seem like you make them much faster.
In my opinion, having a friend do the same thing over and over is a great way to find out what the proper response is (this is where almost everyone should really start). I do feel, however, that if you know those responses having a chance of variance is much more applicable to an actual game of Starcraft, and therefore will provide better training mentally for making those decisions instantaneously upon seeing information. This is all, of course, assuming that the player in question knows all the correct responses.
One reason I really believe in variance (even in practice) is because it helps to include the decisions that filter out the information you want from the info you don't want; if you know what he's doing, chances are you aren't going to want any information regardless. Ultimately, it helps you practice that step as well as the ones before it.
I definitely agree that playing against the same build is the right way to start, not only because you can become very familiar with the correct responses that will leave you in the best position, but also because it is a smaller chunk of decisions to make and thus nicely isolates those decisions from other similar ones.
I am a bit skeptical about the demonstration on why APM is not an adequate indicator... It just says it is not good because it doesn't measure your "true speed". Of course it does! it just counts the number of actions per minut, nothing deep or strange there... if you can give 300 orders per minut and control what you are doing, then you are going fast. When you are driving a car, speed is in miles or kilometers per hour. When you're in front of your computer, it's actions per minut... Then of course, high apm doesn't mean you play the most efficient way, in the same way that you can drive a car faster and yet take more time to get to a certain point, because you made a detour. But that doesn't mean your car wasn't going fast...
And what does that mean??
Therefore, using common sense, we can deduce APM is actually a measure of [(Number of completed tasks * average actions included per task) completed per 1.39 minutes], which makes it basically a rough measure of how many tasks you assign yourself. You can't really improve this number (it's pretty much defined by how mentally "quick" you are; if you can find a way to make yourself smarter, be sure to tell me), and you definitely don't want to increase the length of each task, so APM is down the shitter as far as a measure of speed. APM is a poor and inconsistent measure of hand speed, because many players do not utilize the entirety of their handspeed (none are required to) for a significant portion of the game, so APM sucks again here.
Poor common sense, he must be suffering when reading that...
On August 01 2011 16:50 Macpo wrote: I am a bit skeptical about the demonstration on why APM is not an adequate indicator... It just says it is not good because it doesn't measure your "true speed". Of course it does! it just counts the number of actions per minut, nothing deep or strange there... if you can give 300 orders per minut and control what you are doing, then you are going fast. When you are driving a car, speed is in miles or kilometers per hour. When you're in front of your computer, it's actions per minut... Then of course, high apm doesn't mean you play the most efficient way, in the same way that you can drive a car faster and yet take more time to get to a certain point, because you made a detour. But that doesn't mean your car wasn't going fast...
APM can be used to measure your speed, as long as you do not make any useless clicks. Now watching streams i see player clicking 30 times to move a unit instead of one time. APM shows 300, (bad) caster says "insane APM, this guy is soooo fast".. but after all he is just moving one unit.
What the OP said is right, but i doubt anyone who didnt know that before will read this post and really understand it.
You could sum up the full OP with: 1.) APM includes spam, and therefore doesnt measure your speed. 2.) To get faster you need to practice the action you want to be faster at. 3.)+ Show Spoiler +
well before i reply, i just wanna say that your whole concept is stupid because you're saying APM should be replaced by this alleged measurement in which there is no legitimate way to calculate. WTF? if you don't care about APM, just ignore it, it's not a huge deal, but this is pretty much useless theorycrafting.
Therefore, using common sense, we can deduce APM is actually a measure of [(Number of completed tasks * average actions included per task) completed per 1.39 minutes], which makes it basically a rough measure of how many tasks you assign yourself. You can't really improve this number (it's pretty much defined by how mentally "quick" you are; if you can find a way to make yourself smarter, be sure to tell me) The only real use for APM would be to measure the MCT and PCT (moreso the PCT) of one player against the other; keep in mind this statistic is really, really skewed as well, because of that same lack of full mental and physical application across the board for the whole duration of measurement.
random bronze zerg player has 40 total APM (200+ at one point if he spams), but at any given passive moment during the game (after 10 minutes), he only has 20-40 current APM during passive moments, and 60-100 during active situations where all the tasks he assigns himself are called upon to be completed simultaneously. the tasks that he assigns himself are building units, rallying, managing queens, spreading creep, scouting, positioning overlords, army movement, and developing tech when necessary.
idra has 200 total APM, but at any given passive moment during the game (after 10 minutes), he has 150-200 curent APM, and 200-300+ during active situations. idra assigns himself the same exact tasks as the bronze player.
both of these are averages taken from many games i've watched both of idra and of random bronze players. the bronze player is able to complete the tasks he's given to some extent. you asked how to make yourself smarter, i.e. improve your APM? do what random bronze player does, but do it consistently, accurately, and quickly, like idra does. that's what APM shows. your math formula is poor and based off of that i would assume your understanding of APM in general is incredibly poor.
people who talk about APM being useless usually only talk about total APM because they're stupid and they're stupid because they know total APM is easily inflated, yet they try to act like people arguing that APM matters are actually referring to total APM. actually good players demonstrate how good their mechanical skills are with their current APM which you can check sporadically during different paces of the game and different scenarios of the game (i.e. managing 1 base vs 2 vs 3, etc).
it is not a 100% accurate indicator of any specific skill, but it is a solid general indicator of a player who is potentially weak in an area, and conversely that a player is competent in all the necessary areas to play high level SCBW/2. usually once you develop most of your skills, your APM will reach an "average current" APM of a certain level depending on your race, usually 130-200+ during passive play at the current stage of SC2, though Nada has a similar amount of APM in BW as he does in SC2 for example. some players inflate this by performing actions with extreme excess even well into mid-game like ViBE, but most don't.
strong players who have low APM are usually notoriously poor multi-taskers, including players like Axslav, Minigun and Sjow. they cannot handle the tasks which get your APM high, such as complex army movement. they often crumble when they are not setting the pace of the game and they are being harassed in multiple locations or having to deal with an army with a diverse set of threats happening on separate parts of the minimap. they also lack the multi-tasking to harass multiple locations at once if they have to deal with a split army that can potentially defend both threats.
if you pay attention to players' APMs enough during games at different moments, you learn to understand what the number is telling you. it isn't obvious and it isn't accurate but it is not useless, and it's certainly infinitely more practical than your measurement considering your measurement can't even be used.
I'm still reading (and so far I like the post) but I just wanted to point out that you've defined APM as the amount of actions taken in a Starcraft 2 minute and you have said that a Starcraft 2 minute is 1.39 (83.4s) minutes, when in actuality a starcraft 2 minute is something more like ~43 seconds (I believe, you may want to check this out before editing it to another possibly incorrect number ).
On August 01 2011 15:14 whoopingchow wrote: To me, APM has always seemed more of how many things you can keep track of, more than a measurement of physical ability. I've definitely found that isolating the problem, like you mention in your OP, to absolutely help me. Like Day9 says, making things automatic drastically frees up my mind to think about things that require more of my focus, like decision making or micro-ing. To this end, I've taken to opening up blank Notepad documents when I'm at work and just spamming hotkeys and sequences (I'm T, so 5s5s4a4a4a3s3s3s557bs115s5s etc). Practicing this automaticity frees up some space in my brain to process scouting information, tactics, etc. Obviously, I have a long way to go, but I've definitely found myself forgetting fewer things and keeping up my macro, and gradually increasing my APM as I've gotten better at doing things automatically and focusing on other things.
TLDR: I absolutely agree with your "isolate the problem and focus on it" adage. I open up a blank text files at work and spam hotkey combinations I know I need to do in-game to practice and it's definitely helped me a ton.
This is a great way to practice, and a lot more convenient to a lot of people (like you said, all you need is wordpad ).
I tried that thing with notepad too. Although it feels quite hard for me to imagine what to do when I don't have my SC2 screen in front of me - and only with notepad if feels like my hand does not work as fast as ingame. Thats why I gave up on this method. Someone else recognized something similar?
On August 01 2011 15:20 bonerificus wrote: One thing I would like to say, however, is that having relevant visual cues is very important to maintaining a good speed throughout the initiation and completion of a task.
One thing I don't talk about above is a space between mental interpretation and physical action. There is a short period where your nerves have to find a starting point, and if you practice too much without receiving the stimuli you would in a regular game, this time begins to increase dramatically (this is for a lot of reasons that would take quite a while to explain, PM me if you're really interested)!
And maybe this is THE important thing! When only having notepad and a line that fills with numbers and letters it means nothing to me. When im ingame my brain knows that my fingers do something useful. Also I'm at a point where my hand can do certain actions after my brain says sth like: "go build probes.go build units." without further thinking which keys are needed to be pressed.
I know Day[9] brought this up a couple of times and I read it somwhere else: If you have sparetime, just to the motions with you fingers to build/keep up muscle memoy. BUT I feel like I can NOT do it (properly fast) without being IN the game - now: is that good, because I connect certain actions with specific moments and I can trigger keystroke-chains - OR is this BAD because its not totally imprinted to my body/hand/muscles and there is still that need to trigger it first before it works fast enough? Maybe this is what is meant by "being in the zone" - not sure...
To people in this thread getting riled up about APM:
APM is not useless. There's a good chance that a player with high APM also has a lower ACT. The problem is that it is not a measure that actually allows a meaningful comparison between players. Two reasons, as detailed in the OP:
1) It's a long-term average. If one player has insanely low ACT and does stuff at twice the speed other players do, that's going to leave him with extra time in which there is relatively little to do. If that player doesn't spam during that time, his APM is going to be exactly the same as the other players, even though his reactions were twice as fast. Starcraft is not a game that goes faster as the player gets faster: factors like building time, move speed, DPS, etc all bottleneck the speed of events, and at a certain point there simply isn't anything useful to inbetween the moments when an action is needed. That's when players need to start spamming to have APM reflect their actual speed.
2) It doesn't actually relate to quality of gameplay all that much. Watch VODs of high APM players and see how, without fail, most of them give each move order between 3-8 times, even when the location of that move order is almost identical. Bam, APM is now 3 to 8 times higher than the actual "useful apm" (making the army move, only 1 action). On a similar note, I've seen players with lowish APM react immediately to a drop, while some people are hovering around the 200APM mark and react 2 seconds late. Which one is the better player and which one does APM suggest is the better player? By factoring in mental processing time instead of just raw keystrokes, you get a much more useful measure of a player's speed than APM gives you. I can get an almost pro-level APM just by mashing keys all over the place while playing cookiecutter builds, but I'm fairly sure I don't have nearly the same level of control and awareness they do.
On August 01 2011 20:24 Sotamursu wrote: I read the OP and glanced through the replies. How exactly would you go about measuring ACT?
I'm not sure it's possible from within SC2 itself, because the game would have to know which events you find relevant and what your reaction to them has to be. As far as I understand the measure, it comes down to the time between you being notified of something important, and you having completed your reaction to that event. For instance, the time between the "probe complete" sound playing and you having queued up another probe. However, you'd have to measure a series of these events as well, since it's fairly easy to prime yourself for a certain event and then react quickly. You can't do the same if you sequentially get "probe complete" sound, "construct additional pylons", and a drop in your base, especially if you don't know the order or timing they're gonna come in.
My question would be--how do you go about really practicing this? I think I'm at the point in my gameplay where sitting down and making an SCV every 17 seconds isn't really going to help me (in fact, I'm overproducing them of late). So what are specific ways to get your ACT higher?
But cycling through your control groups is perhaps the foundation of good macro. You aren't doing any ability completion there, you just going through your mental checklist to make sure you are remembering to do everything. So APM is still very important and not a useless stat.
On August 01 2011 22:36 Micket wrote: But cycling through your control groups is perhaps the foundation of good macro. You aren't doing any ability completion there, you just going through your mental checklist to make sure you are remembering to do everything. So APM is still very important and not a useless stat.
Edit: Took out super long rant.
Micket has grasped part of it. APM is a great indicator because of how many things actually need to be done/checked up on.
There's so many things that need to be done that you will get to the point that there's no delay between actions.
Once you understand the game fully enough. It's not about knowing what to do. It's about prioritizing it. And seeing how many things you can check off that priority list.
Hence APM will invertly scale with ACT.
Also. Some actions are far more important than others but not have the same ACT and will affect APM the same way. ACT is truly only a worthwhile stat if you find yourself staring at the screen spamming because you're clueless and don't know what to do next.
TLDR: Until you actually know how to play or at least commentate, don't argue with a pro like Red[NaDa] and think that APM is not as viable a stat as your newfangled "ACT".
On August 01 2011 16:50 Macpo wrote: I am a bit skeptical about the demonstration on why APM is not an adequate indicator... It just says it is not good because it doesn't measure your "true speed". Of course it does! it just counts the number of actions per minut, nothing deep or strange there... if you can give 300 orders per minut and control what you are doing, then you are going fast. When you are driving a car, speed is in miles or kilometers per hour. When you're in front of your computer, it's actions per minut... Then of course, high apm doesn't mean you play the most efficient way, in the same way that you can drive a car faster and yet take more time to get to a certain point, because you made a detour. But that doesn't mean your car wasn't going fast...
APM measures a players speed in the context of one game. It doesn't measure his maximum speed by any means, because for a large portion of the game players do not utilize their full speed. Because we don't know how far below a player is below their maximum, or how that relates to other player's maximum when using APM, we cannot tell how fast a player truly is by using APM.
On August 01 2011 17:19 elgranbasio wrote: I sympathize with you about all the people who blindly comment about APM on here without reading your detailed/well thought out post.
Stay strong, and keep coming up with well presented/organized posts like these :D
You could sum up the full OP with: 1.) APM includes spam, and therefore doesnt measure your speed. 2.) To get faster you need to practice the action you want to be faster at. 3.)+ Show Spoiler +
spoilers for the win
This, fortunately enough, isn't accurate. I actually explain a whole lot of things other than those in the OP, such as:
Helping to clarify the reasoning behind the invalidity of APM.
Several key technical terms relating to handspeed and the quickness with which a player can complete any given objective.
Providing clear guidelines and hopefully fresh advice on how to best increase that same quickness
Introduced the concept of mental isolation to a community previously unfamiliar with it, that deals with it a whole lot.
On August 02 2011 01:32 bonerificus wrote: APM measures a players speed in the context of one game. ... Please read the OP in it's entirety.
Well, no offense, but I don't really see the point of measuring one's speed outside the game, as if it were its "true" speed... You just kind of build some abstract thing that never applies and therefore doesn't help much. it's a bit like religious sects telling you you are only using 10% of your brain capacities. You could also open paint and see how many dots you can make in one minut with your mouse...
And also, please, avoid remarks like "read the OP in its entirety" blablabla. people may know how to read and still not agree
On August 01 2011 19:06 Herculix wrote: well before i reply, i just wanna say that your whole concept is stupid because you're saying APM should be replaced by this alleged measurement in which there is no legitimate way to calculate. WTF? if you don't care about APM, just ignore it, it's not a huge deal, but this is pretty much useless theorycrafting.
I don't think APM should be replaced by ACT, and nor is it ever said in the OP. The fact of the matter is, ACT is a real, accurate, statistic (whether or not we can consistenty measure it); if you understand it, working towards improving it will give you a tangible improvement in-game.
random bronze zerg player has 40 total APM (200+ at one point if he spams), but at any given passive moment during the game (after 10 minutes), he only has 20-40 current APM during passive moments, and 60-100 during active situations where all the tasks he assigns himself are called upon to be completed simultaneously. the tasks that he assigns himself are building units, rallying, managing queens, spreading creep, scouting, positioning overlords, army movement, and developing tech when necessary.
idra has 200 total APM, but at any given passive moment during the game (after 10 minutes), he has 150-200 curent APM, and 200-300+ during active situations. idra assigns himself the same exact tasks as the bronze player.
both of these are averages taken from many games i've watched both of idra and of random bronze players. the bronze player is able to complete the tasks he's given to some extent. you asked how to make yourself smarter, i.e. improve your APM? do what random bronze player does, but do it consistently, accurately, and quickly, like idra does. that's what APM shows. your math formula is poor and based off of that i would assume your understanding of APM in general is incredibly poor.
What you say here doesn't even make sense... did you read the post?
In the OP, I mention how an increase in ACT on a highly represented action will reflect in increased APM, until about 250 APM. The "random bronze zerg" you mention A. does not have anywhere near the same number of processed mental tasks as IdrA (a professional player has much smaller, more precise guidelines, like "send an overlord to the left side of his ramp" rather than "send an overlord to his base"), and B. cannot physically complete all of those tasks, because he takes too long and the oldest uncompleted tasks fall off the memory queue (also mentioned in OP).
Then, you claim APM shows how consistent, accurate, and quick you are? This is unfortunately just not true, and I'm tired of answering similar questions, so please go back and read the OP if you are wondering the validity of APM as a measure of speed and... consistency..
people who talk about APM being useless usually only talk about total APM because they're stupid and they're stupid because they know total APM is easily inflated, yet they try to act like people arguing that APM matters are actually referring to total APM. actually good players demonstrate how good their mechanical skills are with their current APM which you can check sporadically during different paces of the game and different scenarios of the game (i.e. managing 1 base vs 2 vs 3, etc).
I've also answered this complaint a ton. The reason a player who is consistently faster than another player has higher APM is because they complete key tasks faster than the other player. If you have faster ACTs, then you will complete more actions total (at least in a complex game like SC2), and therefore have a higher in-game APM.
APM is a byproduct of fast ACTs, explained in OP...
it is not a 100% accurate indicator of any specific skill, but it is a solid general indicator of a player who is potentially weak in an area, and conversely that a player is competent in all the necessary areas to play high level SCBW/2. usually once you develop most of your skills, your APM will reach an "average current" APM of a certain level depending on your race, usually 130-200+ during passive play at the current stage of SC2, though Nada has a similar amount of APM in BW as he does in SC2 for example. some players inflate this by performing actions with extreme excess even well into mid-game like ViBE, but most don't.
strong players who have low APM are usually notoriously poor multi-taskers, including players like Axslav, Minigun and Sjow. they cannot handle the tasks which get your APM high, such as complex army movement. they often crumble when they are not setting the pace of the game and they are being harassed in multiple locations or having to deal with an army with a diverse set of threats happening on separate parts of the minimap. they also lack the multi-tasking to harass multiple locations at once if they have to deal with a split army that can potentially defend both threats.
The first paragraph is fine, but again, APM is a byproduct of ACT so we can easily make that conclusion. You still don't show the worth in APM over ACT here.
This is a false conclusion. Just because you can name three players that have problems multitasking and also have low APM, does not mean that their is an actual correlation therein. White-ra has like 107 APM, and he multitasks as much as SeleCT.
On August 02 2011 01:32 bonerificus wrote: APM measures a players speed in the context of one game. ... Please read the OP in it's entirety.
Well, no offense, but I don't really see the point of measuring one's speed outside the game, as if it were its "true" speed... You just kind of build some abstract thing that never applies and therefore doesn't help much. it's a bit like religious sects telling you you are only using 10% of your brain capacities. You could also open paint and see how many dots you can make in one minut with your mouse...
And also, please, avoid remarks like "read the OP in its entirety" blablabla. people may know how to read and still not agree
With no intention to be a hater ,
Macpo
No, This isn't even close to correct!
I don't think ACT is something you should ever measure, as you don't need to. if you know what it is and seek to improve it, then you will see a direct correlation in-game regarding the speed at which you macro.
On August 01 2011 22:36 Micket wrote: But cycling through your control groups is perhaps the foundation of good macro. You aren't doing any ability completion there, you just going through your mental checklist to make sure you are remembering to do everything. So APM is still very important and not a useless stat.
Yes, you are. Every time you click a hotkey, a full task is initiated and completed.
Please remember, as I said in OP: EVERYTHING you do in the game of Starcraft is defined in actions. Not for one second are you not cycling through action completion.
Even spam is 100% action completion; to explain, I will put an example in terms of the OP:
When you're not doing anything in the early portion of the game, your brain recognises this lack of input as a stimuli. It formulates a physical instruction list, which is likely to spam a few keys over and over, and sends it to your fingers for completion.
When you're macroing in the midgame, your brain's internal timer will signal a specific portion of the cerebellum, which then formulates an physical instruction list (in this case, probably clicking a few hotkeys to check your production) and sends it off to your fingers.
Well, If I am correct, what you want to do is to introduce a way to evaluate speed. Let me quote you, so that we agree at least on that. this is about the first sentence of the post.
Often when I listen to professional players or commentators, they seem to make a connection between the speed at which a player is able to complete a task and their Actions Per Minute; the purpose of this post is to debunk this myth, and provide a more accurate description and metric for a players ACT
Now, speed is a relation between a quantity and a time (like kilometers per hour, or numbers of pages written per day, actions per minut, whatever) right?
So, what is the quantity and what is the time you are using to elaborate your new speed indicator? (because you claim to give a metric, not only "ideas")
On August 01 2011 20:24 Sotamursu wrote: I read the OP and glanced through the replies. How exactly would you go about measuring ACT?
Well, it's really hard and you don't need to
When someone really feels a desire to measure their ACT, a psychologist can administer a test that presents a few hopefully apparent stimuli and provoke a predictable, consistent response.
This is often something along the lines of "write "The brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.""
It's iffy though, for a whole lot of really complex reasons. For one, it's hard to isolate the ACT from other components of the thought process (most of which are not present in an instinctive game like Starcraft) that occur in the same timeframe. It's also nearly impossible to isolate MCT and PCT, which is the real desired statistic in the medical field.
Normally, it's used to diagnose a few rare post-processing disorders.
Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions :>
On August 02 2011 02:04 Macpo wrote: Well, If I am correct, what you want to do is to introduce a way to evaluate speed. Let me quote you, so that we agree at least on that. this is about the first sentence of the post.
Often when I listen to professional players or commentators, they seem to make a connection between the speed at which a player is able to complete a task and their Actions Per Minute; the purpose of this post is to debunk this myth, and provide a more accurate description and metric for a players ACT
Now, speed is a relation between a quantity and a time (like kilometers per hour, or numbers of pages written per day, actions per minut, whatever) right?
So, what is the quantity and what is the time you are using to elaborate your new speed indicator? (because you claim to give a metric, not only "ideas")
That's really not what I mean in the quote. The purpose of the OP is less to replace APM and more to provide a statistic that is relevant to actually improving your macro speed. I'm going to go back and edit that, because I think it's a little bit misleading.
You shouldn't ever have to evaluate anything with ACT; if it quickens in many key tasks, the improvement will be apparent in other areas (like floating money).
If you want the actual methodology for measuring ACT in the psychological field, I can give that to you as well.
Normally, a patient is given a clear, hopefully easily comprehensible stimuli, and is timed on how long it takes him/her to process and complete relevant PMTs (processed mental tasks). This is often "Write "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."".
The test is repeated with nearly identical stimuli 5 to 10 times, and then averaged. The final number is measured in seconds, using the form (completed actions/second). This test is generally used to diagnose rare post-processing disorders in the medical field.
Well maybe a suggestion then : why don't you take a case a make an example of ACT applied to sc2 (like taking a game, or following a player on one minut; or something...) and publish it here, underlying its interest as compared to APM.
It may clarify things a bit (which are still pretty confusing at least in my head )
Let's say you were trying to come up with a standardized test similar to the one for measuring ACT in psychology: what tasks in SC2 would be easily quantifiable?
I can think of several isolated tasks that could be practiced separately. Many of these already exist as custom micro maps.
- injecting larva for all of your hatcheries - creep spread using creep tumors - macro cycles with all races - splitting and loading an army into dropships - spreading marines (such as vs banelings) etc.
It also seems like there is going to be a significant correlation between typing speed and ACT for e-Sports, so a player could work on increasing their hand/typing coordination/speed outside of SC2 as well. Mouse precision, speed, and accuracy could also be worked on and measured outside of SC2.
On August 02 2011 02:31 integral wrote: Let's say you were trying to come up with a standardized test similar to the one for measuring ACT in psychology: what tasks in SC2 would be easily quantifiable?
I can think of several isolated tasks that could be practiced separately. Many of these already exist as custom micro maps.
- injecting larva for all of your hatcheries - creep spread using creep tumors - macro cycles with all races - splitting and loading an army into dropships - spreading marines (such as vs banelings) etc.
It also seems like there is going to be a significant correlation between typing speed and ACT for e-Sports, so a player could work on increasing their hand/typing coordination/speed outside of SC2 as well. Mouse precision, speed, and accuracy could also be worked on and measured outside of SC2.
Yeah this sounds way more useful than some hypothetical ACT thing.
Also add the speed at which you do these things
splitting army against drops and adjusting army hotkeys using initial lings to scout for proxies
The average speed at which people do these things+ things listed above = a better measure of the skill of a player in most circumstances.
On August 01 2011 22:30 NASAmoose wrote: Really interesting original post, thank you sir.
My question would be--how do you go about really practicing this? I think I'm at the point in my gameplay where sitting down and making an SCV every 17 seconds isn't really going to help me (in fact, I'm overproducing them of late). So what are specific ways to get your ACT higher?
If you feel you have basic building blocks down pat, try doing them on a bigger scale
For instance, if you feel comfortable making SCVs, Marines out of three rax, checking your control groups, dropping mules, and building supply depots consistently, try putting the whole thing on a larger scale. Load up a custom game, and keep your money low on 7 bases and pure mineral tech
Doing things like this force your brain to do be highly familiar with repetitive actions, because you're going to push yourself really hard to stay low on money from an income higher than you're used to (I hope!).
You can also try to reduce mental processing time, by having a friend do one out of three or five predetermined 6 minute timing pushes in a custom game. Scout at the same, consistent time, and push yourself to make necessary preparations faster than you have in the past.
Like I said in the OP, there is a point where your ACT gets low enough that you end up processing a fuckton of actions - at this point, you're going to see your handspeed increase substantially. The best way to do this is those multitasking UMS - they all do a great job of forcing a shitload of stimuli onto you, and making you react quickly enough to do them all.
Alternatively, you could try to micro two or three dropships around in a specific pattern (maybe a ven diagramm), and macro at home.
The thing you really want to aim for when your keystrokes are accurate, precise, and quick is a consistent strech on the speed at which those strokes occur.
Thanks so much for the question and the kind words!
APM is spamming for most of the players... may be yes. I'm a player which spam a lot of task. But, my hand goes warmer and this is very important for my finger speed. Then, this is spam YES ... but not only.
I can add one thing I saw recently looking at some VODs of very good players (Team SLAYERS / OGS). I saw a surprising thing. Indeed, during the kitting, they built some SCV/Probes. The Terran guy did his kitting with his Marines and between 2 shots, we could see the CC and a scv... same thing with the Protoss guy who did some kitting with stalkers... and built between 2 shot some Probes.
DOn't ask me how they did that........ but they really did it. The most impressive was the Terran... so so so fast! This is not Spam... this is just ultra fast tasks!
I feel like APM is one of those things that only the people who does not have it care so much about it. I never heard any of the pros saying you need to have over 9000 APM or gtfo. Even ret said you should not focus on raising your APM but it should just come naturally as you play.
Of course, we all know that most of the APM are spam. For the Korean pros that have constant 300-400 APM only a small fraction of that are actually contributed to performing a task, but then why do they bother with it? It's because you CANNOT perform 400 tasks per minute if you do not have 400 APM or higher. The pros realize this fact so they train themselves to be able to continuously perform high APM so that when they actually need to make 400 tasks per minute, they actually have the capacity to and they simply turn those 90% spam APM and switch to full crazy marine split mode.
It's kinda like computer memory in a sense. How many times do you actually need all those 4GB of RAM in your memory? I bet most of the time your 4GB are just sitting idle. However, you know that if you have more memory you are capable of performing faster computation during peak performance. To me, a player's APM is like computer RAM. If two computers have similar specs but one has larger memory I'm going to bet that that one is faster overall (given the entire computation involves some peak performance).
Also,
your Actions per Minute in Starcraft 2 is the amount of times you depress a key with a relevant hotkey, right click, or left click every 1.39 minutes.
Why 1.39 minutes? This is utterly wrong, whether that refers to in game or real life minute. Unless you want to measure APM in real life minute which no one does and then translate that into how many times you click in 1.39 game minutes, which would be super weird.
On August 01 2011 15:14 whoopingchow wrote: To me, APM has always seemed more of how many things you can keep track of, more than a measurement of physical ability. I've definitely found that isolating the problem, like you mention in your OP, to absolutely help me. Like Day9 says, making things automatic drastically frees up my mind to think about things that require more of my focus, like decision making or micro-ing. To this end, I've taken to opening up blank Notepad documents when I'm at work and just spamming hotkeys and sequences (I'm T, so 5s5s4a4a4a3s3s3s557bs115s5s etc). Practicing this automaticity frees up some space in my brain to process scouting information, tactics, etc. Obviously, I have a long way to go, but I've definitely found myself forgetting fewer things and keeping up my macro, and gradually increasing my APM as I've gotten better at doing things automatically and focusing on other things.
TLDR: I absolutely agree with your "isolate the problem and focus on it" adage. I open up a blank text files at work and spam hotkey combinations I know I need to do in-game to practice and it's definitely helped me a ton.
i want to start practicing like this. what's the most optimal hotkey setups? also, should i use my pinky on a(attack, marine)?
For me, personally, I very much dislike using my pinky except to make marines, so I've remapped attack to space. I also hate having control groups past 6, so I've remapped 7,8,9,0 to Tab, Q, W, E. And then, Patrol is R, and Banshees got mapped somewhere else (forget off the top of my head) and the camera hotkeys I remapped to Shift+Z, Shift+X, Shift+C, and Shift+V. That's just my personal hotkey set up, it'll obviously change for what works for you. You could also look into Grid hotkeys (maps all actions to QWERT/ASDFG/ZXCVB), but for control groups, that's completely up to you (Tab, Q, W, E units, 1 scout, 2 Starport, 3 Fact, 4 Rax, 5 CC, 6 E-Bay). Also, you can try searching "Terran Hotkeys" on TL for some inspiration, like this .
On August 01 2011 15:14 whoopingchow wrote: To me, APM has always seemed more of how many things you can keep track of, more than a measurement of physical ability. I've definitely found that isolating the problem, like you mention in your OP, to absolutely help me. Like Day9 says, making things automatic drastically frees up my mind to think about things that require more of my focus, like decision making or micro-ing. To this end, I've taken to opening up blank Notepad documents when I'm at work and just spamming hotkeys and sequences (I'm T, so 5s5s4a4a4a3s3s3s557bs115s5s etc). Practicing this automaticity frees up some space in my brain to process scouting information, tactics, etc. Obviously, I have a long way to go, but I've definitely found myself forgetting fewer things and keeping up my macro, and gradually increasing my APM as I've gotten better at doing things automatically and focusing on other things.
TLDR: I absolutely agree with your "isolate the problem and focus on it" adage. I open up a blank text files at work and spam hotkey combinations I know I need to do in-game to practice and it's definitely helped me a ton.
This is a great way to practice, and a lot more convenient to a lot of people (like you said, all you need is wordpad ).
I tried that thing with notepad too. Although it feels quite hard for me to imagine what to do when I don't have my SC2 screen in front of me - and only with notepad if feels like my hand does not work as fast as ingame. Thats why I gave up on this method. Someone else recognized something similar?
On August 01 2011 15:20 bonerificus wrote: One thing I would like to say, however, is that having relevant visual cues is very important to maintaining a good speed throughout the initiation and completion of a task.
One thing I don't talk about above is a space between mental interpretation and physical action. There is a short period where your nerves have to find a starting point, and if you practice too much without receiving the stimuli you would in a regular game, this time begins to increase dramatically (this is for a lot of reasons that would take quite a while to explain, PM me if you're really interested)!
And maybe this is THE important thing! When only having notepad and a line that fills with numbers and letters it means nothing to me. When im ingame my brain knows that my fingers do something useful. Also I'm at a point where my hand can do certain actions after my brain says sth like: "go build probes.go build units." without further thinking which keys are needed to be pressed.
I know Day[9] brought this up a couple of times and I read it somwhere else: If you have sparetime, just to the motions with you fingers to build/keep up muscle memoy. BUT I feel like I can NOT do it (properly fast) without being IN the game - now: is that good, because I connect certain actions with specific moments and I can trigger keystroke-chains - OR is this BAD because its not totally imprinted to my body/hand/muscles and there is still that need to trigger it first before it works fast enough? Maybe this is what is meant by "being in the zone" - not sure...
just my 2cents about that... ;p
lol that absolutely sounds like being "in the zone". XD
I agree that it may be difficult to translate numbers to in-game actions, but I've found it useful for a) practicing openings in my head, and making sure I'm macro-ing well for at least the first 7 minutes; and b) macro-ing in the middle of micro-intensive situations (position siege tanks, oh shit I need to macro, leapfrog more tanks, macro macro macro, etc). Associating "macro" with a series of key combinations makes the concept of "tapping" a lot easier for me. I also played the cello and piano, so practicing fingerings comes more naturally to me. Not saying that'd be the case for everyone, or that I'm doing it correctly though. Also, I'm still only a high-Bronze leaguer, so I'll anticipate that this'll change as I get better.
I completely understand the whole "tennis swagger" mentality (and do it myself), where a player spams at the beginning of a game to get his/her fingers moving fast because its hard to increase the rhythm your fingers are moving at during the game, but I think that spamming in mid-late game ends up hurting you more than helping.
How often do you spam move commands to units that could easily just have had a 1 click move command? I think the OP is aiming at how to effectively USE your APM, rather than just spamming the same thing, and I think its a very good point. Look at players like Vibe who have 400 APM some games, yet still can lose to players with 100-ish APM. It becomes very apparent that effective APM (as the OP says ACTs per minute) > APM measured in game.
The problem isn't apm, but instead it is how people try to improve it. Higher apm does not correlate to better skill, but there will be a raise in apm as skill rises, eventually peaking at a certain point
On August 03 2011 05:50 yourself2k8 wrote: I think the OP is aiming at how to effectively USE your APM, rather than just spamming the same thing, and I think its a very good point. Look at players like Vibe who have 400 APM some games, yet still can lose to players with 100-ish APM. It becomes very apparent that effective APM (as the OP says ACTs per minute) > APM measured in game.
I think it's not quite "effective APM" that's being discussed, but rather how long it takes to perform certain specific tasks in real time.
Suppose you take a task like selecting a zergling, sending it to an expansion, burrowing it there then rehotkeying your army to exclude that zergling. In theory we can use a stopwatch and measure how long it takes someone to do that. If you practice something specific like that, you should eventually be able to execute it at the maximum speed your dexterity will allow, which in APM numbers should be much higher than your average APM in the course of the game.
It gets a bit trickier when you start analyzing the task itself. Any complex task is composed of many actions, and sometimes you can cut out. For instance, clicking only once instead of three times will reduce the action time by a few milliseconds. However, mouse accuracy is inversely proportional to movement speed (Fitt's law), so someone concerned with making only 1 accurate click might spend more time seeking the right location, whereas the spam clicker might prefer to get the unit moving in the right direction immediately before clicking on the specific location.
So let's say that a player has a peak APM of 600 for these common tasks, and has trained most tasks in game to execute at this speed. This doesn't mean his in game APM is 600, but rather that you'll see these "bursts" of 600 APM in the APM graph, and consequently more empty space of low APM. If he doesn't add more tasks to do, his average APM hasn't increased at all. Obviously, he will probably add more tasks to do, which will increase his average APM (total actions/game time) and overall he will be able to do more in the game. I think the key difference here is going from a specific, task-economization approach compared to using generic finger-exercises to improve "general hand speed."
your Actions per Minute in Starcraft 2 is the amount of times you depress a key with a relevant hotkey, right click, or left click every 1.39 minutes.
Why 1.39 minutes? This is utterly wrong, whether that refers to in game or real life minute. Unless you want to measure APM in real life minute which no one does and then translate that into how many times you click in 1.39 game minutes, which would be super weird.
1.39 minutes in Starcraft time is one minute IRL time...
Well, I think this thread will certainly help people new to the game differentiate between playing fast and playing efficiently. However I feel paying special attention to your ACT is just as useless advice as focusing on APM. Both are equally important in determining how you, the player, executes actions within the game. Just because you're fast doesn't mean you're efficient. And just because you're efficient doesn't mean you're fast. Both improve through practice anyway, dont worry about it. I like the idea of the OP because players can always play more efficiently. In the same breath I will say players can always play faster.
With all of this in mind, I can deduce this post to a reminder to play efficiently and not just quickly. Oh and I learned some sweet new acronyms. Good effort but there's just not much meat to the OP despite its deceptive length.
EPT
). One thing I would like to say, however, is that having relevant visual cues is very important to maintaining a good speed throughout the initiation and completion of a task. 
