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On September 23 2011 17:17 Itsmedudeman wrote:
Umm, if tapping 12345 is spam then what the hell is spam clicking your army to a certain position on the map?
Precisely. That kinda stuff is half the reason my APM is, well, half.
But I'd say tapping isn't really a valid action when the player doesn't even look or looks every 3 seconds from the start to the end of constructing something.
They could try and intelligently detect move-spam and repeat tapping of the same button, except for army selections where tapping twice centres the screen on the unit, which is IMO a very valid action.
And spam is just spam. Still APM, though rubbish APM.
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I'm a bit confused really. If you were doing "useful" tapping to check your production structures, then you should also be producing out of them more regularly, and therefore your real APM will be higher compared to someone who doesn't tap, or only taps to spam and fake higher APM.
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I don't understand this change really. i mean I understand that spamming isn't actual actions helping your play besides tapping. But those who are happy because there low non-spam apm looks better. stop it. Spamming is completely fine, and in a lot of cases helps your mental game at the start of the match. As well as the obvious warming up of your hands for those micro intensive moments during a match. Just because it doesn't count it in the apm tab, doesn't mean anyone is going to stop spamming early in the game. It keeps your mind moving fast, as well as your hands. Nada, who has 300 apm thoughout almost any length game, SPAMS like a madman early. Unbelieveable spam. I saw him at mlg raleigh playing, unreal spam. now his apm will be half that if not more than half that. But in the end, it REALLY doesn't matter. All that matters is the "tracking" of your apm in the tab. Tracking your apm with the tab is useless as most players can feel after a game if they were "fast" or not. It's just making those who don't spam feel better I guess. Which is fine, because spamming is the last thing on the list when trying to get good at sc.
But if anyone who does spam is upset about this, then it's deserved. I know LOADS of those people who watch a game and only look at the apm tab.
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My apm dropped from around 160 to an average 100, doesn't change crap about the game so I don't see the importance if the tab showed 1000 or 1.
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I'm one of those players that likes to spam 300 apm when all you did was build 3 buildings and queue workers. This results in burst APM early which averages out to 130-140 apm after about 8-10 minutes gametime. After the patch I noticed the new APM counter seems to be highly skewed toward more bases. first base adds 56 apm, second base adds 60-80 apm third base adds 40-50 apm making. Obviously these values should be taken in relation to the old 140 apm tap average.
Before the apm was kinda an entertaining tab look at me i can spam harder than you. Currently the apm change is kind of boring because i like to play 1 handed for the first 6 minutes or so when i'm bored and now people won't notice my apm being unusually low. Maybe in future when top level players are like 5 base vs 5 base those 300+ apms will be seen again but currently blizzard just removed a for fun feature that was useless and replaced it with a not fun feature thats useless.
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APM is now entirely irrelevant, instead of only partially. Oh well, nothing huge was lost.
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On September 23 2011 23:44 Monkeyballs25 wrote:
I'm a bit confused really. If you were doing "useful" tapping to check your production structures, then you should also be producing out of them more regularly, and therefore your real APM will be higher compared to someone who doesn't tap, or only taps to spam and fake higher APM.
Its also a mental thing, as you cycle through your hotkeys (1515151515154433443366) you're going "Macro, positioning, macro, positioning, scout, harass, scout, harass". Even if you aren't doing anything that click, you're considering if that's what you need to do at this time. I regularly spam the hotkey for my obs for no reason except to make my camera bounce to their base for a split second. I'll spam by army hotkey after that to check for crazy shit. 90% of the time its just "spam." 10% of the time its game changing.
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On September 24 2011 00:27 Jacobs Ladder wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2011 23:44 Monkeyballs25 wrote:
I'm a bit confused really. If you were doing "useful" tapping to check your production structures, then you should also be producing out of them more regularly, and therefore your real APM will be higher compared to someone who doesn't tap, or only taps to spam and fake higher APM. Its also a mental thing, as you cycle through your hotkeys (1515151515154433443366) you're going "Macro, positioning, macro, positioning, scout, harass, scout, harass". Even if you aren't doing anything that click, you're considering if that's what you need to do at this time. I regularly spam the hotkey for my obs for no reason except to make my camera bounce to their base for a split second. I'll spam by army hotkey after that to check for crazy shit. 90% of the time its just "spam." 10% of the time its game changing.
Yep, I totally get that its a mental thing. That's why I don't think its super important to measure it. If your early game "warmup" tapping/cycling is to get you ready for midgame, then it'll show up when you're doing more things in the midgame then someone who doesn't warm up.
And when you do the cycling midgame it should show up in more scouting, more repositioning, more units produced.
The APM counter probably should count doubletaps to change camera position though. Does it count minimap leftclicking to do the same thing?
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I don't know if this has been discussed since this page is 36 pages long, but I think rather than argue whether or not spamming is useful or whatever most of the discussion has been about, it's better to look at it on a wider scale.
The coverage of Starcraft 2 has undoubtedly brought the game to a much wider audience than most (if not all) other RTS's ever have. I think the detrimental part of having the APM change is the "skill" appeal to people who aren't very familiar with the game. One of the major things that everyone I have ever shown a Starcraft (Brood War or SC2) game to is how fast the players' hands are moving. Especially with the addition of the Razer headsets that measure your APM and change color accordingly, I think Blizzard should really be trying to showcase the APM rather than altering it by not recognizing "wasteful" keystrokes.
The appeal of telling someone that has relatively little interest in computer games that Nada regularly plays with close to 400 APM and then showing him or her things like his keyboard view, his headset color compared to other players', and FPVODs of his make this game far more attractive. It's like telling someone that Zdeno Chara had a 106 MPH slap shot at the NHL skills competition as compared to saying "he has a hard shot."
From a marketing point of view, showcasing the skill of the players has to be a stronger alternative than emphasizing EAPM. The debate on APM will always be a prominent one within the community, but I think that's something that should overlooked when it comes to introducing new people to the game.
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In my opinion it is a good change. However, it would have been even better if they at the same time fixed it so APM was actually actions per minute and not actions per blizzard-minute. It makes no sense to have it this way. If anything, they should have changed it at the same time so peoples APM didn't go down like mad, as it would have resulted in less complaints.
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On September 24 2011 02:00 FuRRyChoBo wrote:
The appeal of telling someone that has relatively little interest in computer games that Nada regularly plays with close to 400 APM and then showing him or her things like his keyboard view, his headset color compared to other players', and FPVODs of his make this game far more attractive. It's like telling someone that Zdeno Chara had a 106 MPH slap shot at the NHL skills competition as compared to saying "he has a hard shot."
Ok, so why can't you still do that? I mean I've watched quite a bit of starcraft pro games, especially the first few GSLs. APM was just a number vaguely associated with player skills. Pros had APM in the hundreds, less skilled players in the 50-60ish range and newbies in the 10-20s. If someone told me Nada had a 400 APM I wouldn't sit down and think "wow he does...*pulls out calculator* 6 things a second!?". It'd just be "huh, his number is bigger then most people's number, good for him". Not to mention at the time I would have thought "actions" in APM included actually giving units orders, not just cycling control groups. Sure anyone can do that quickly. What impressed me as a spectator was the onscreen action, the camera flipping back and forth from midfield repositions, to drops to home base activity, crazy unit micro, lightning fast spellcasting. Stuff that the new APM still measures just fine afaik, except possibly for the viewpoint movement.
Now everyone's APM is lower, some more than others. But will anything really change at the competitive level? Unless someone's APM was disproportionately based on tapping the relative numbers should stay the same. I guess I'll have to watch some games and see.
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I don't like the change, and don't understand the need to tinker with it. As a spectator, it's fun to notice the difference in speed between casual and professional players. Sure, it doesn't mean much at face value, but it's an easily quantifiable statistic, and the mental impression of speed that the numbers provide makes things seem a bit more exciting.
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just because the number displaying your apm is different, it doesn't mean you are playing slower or faster
it really doesn't matter at all
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The silliest thing is that they placed the change under "bug fixes". The only bug was the blizzard minutes and they didnt change that.
APM worked perfektly fina as a measurement for over 8years since JCA invented BW-Chart and now they just have to mess it up for no apparent reason at all.
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Its funny how I can right click my minerals 1000 times a second and each action counts so I can get high apm for real useless spam.. but cycling production buildings means nothing.
After games I lost I would sometimes watch replays on x8 speed and look at my apm to see how my macro was before since I would never do useless spam so it was an easy way to tell how my macro is.. now I cant do that anymore since even if I have terrible macro it will look similar.
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On September 24 2011 00:50 Monkeyballs25 wrote:
The APM counter probably should count doubletaps to change camera position though. Does it count minimap leftclicking to do the same thing?
Nope. Camera shifts via unit hotkeys, camera hotkeys, or snapping with the minimap do not count actions. (And to be clear, these did not count as actions pre 1.4 as well).
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I don't really care about this but what annoys me is, if they took the time to do this, why the fuck didn't they just take the time to also make it show actual apm and not x1,34 or w/e it is.
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IDC about what my apm is in game but my avg of a 15-20 min game went down by like 150 haha. Guess I have some bad habits to break :/
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Don't really care much about the change but i just don't see the point of it. Let the spammers have high APM and fix some of the other problems in the game.
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APM spamming is an old ritual carried out by oldschoolers. It's proven that faster movement allows a player to be able to react on-the-fly at a faster speed when he needs to, since his hands are more used to fast speed.
Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that the APM change will make us slower; no. You will still spam if you know it is useful to you, regardless of what the APM charts state in the beginning of the game. However, the ability to see your APM in replays is more of a psychological boost in my opinion.
I don't agree that this should have been changed. If anything, I think the ingame timer should be changed to real time for "Fastest", or any other game mode. I just don't like the timers and APM measurements whatsoever, but I even admit that they won't change anything aside from psychological effects which mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.
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EPT
