APM measurements changes in 1.4.0 - Page 40

On September 27 2011 10:10 Sina92 wrote:
my apm is still around 90-110, just like before the patch. high master toss na / eu

On September 27 2011 10:12 Joey Wheeler wrote:

That probably means you use one control group for your army

Also, I'd like to see what pros think about this. Many of the people that used the poll could possibly be in lower leagues so it's indifferent to them.

On September 27 2011 10:12 Joey Wheeler wrote:

That probably means you use one control group for your army

Also, I'd like to see what pros think about this. Many of the people that used the poll could possibly be in lower leagues so it's indifferent to them.

On September 27 2011 10:10 The Final Boss wrote:
...I feel like the only people who really care about APM are in lower leagues...

On September 23 2011 00:56 momonami5 wrote:
seems like it just change that beginning type of apm spam hehe dunno why ppl proud of apm high from that then in battle its like 50 apm.

On September 27 2011 18:08 I_PROTOSSED_MY_HW wrote:
This patch has made it harder for me to tell whether or not I am actually keeping on top of everything. Before the patch I used to have ~250 APM. I'd usually speed through a replay to see if my APM was around 250, and I'd know that I was on top of everything if that was the case. If I had much lower APM, I'd know that I skimped on macro/unit control/whatever.

In the last game I played (in the new patch), I had 93 APM. I cannot tell whether or not this is really bad, so due to the change I now have to disregard APM and sit through every replay and see for myself if I kept on top of everything.

Basically, changing how APM works "forced" me into sinking my time into watching replays instead of playing games. I do not like this change at all.

Do you guys know of any programs that tell you your actual APM, and not just Blizzard's arbitrarily decided "APM" measurement?

On September 27 2011 13:31 usethis2 wrote:

Yes. Pre-1.40, even among pros I noticed weird APM shifts. That is, the lesser/losing players' APMs tend to be ridiculously high at the beginning (let's say 400), then once the supply goes up and battles start occuring, their APMs go down (below 150). (Lots of foreigner pros)

Now with 1.40, I see the better/winning players' APMs sharply increasing under high pressure and very multitask-heavy circumstances. (300+) So far I've seen MKP and DRG's APMs being that way.

Don't tell me those pros are spamming right clicks. (rofl) They are simply performing more actions, which is reflected in their APMs.

Now, assuming the above (we will certainly see more and more evidence), can we agree this system is at least more objective?

Edit: On a second thought, MKP might be spamming right click quite a bit for his marine splitting. XD But those are legit, game-deciding, and visible on-screen spams. (i.e. verifiable by 3rd person)

On September 27 2011 23:40 ZarMulix wrote:


I agree with most of this. I see that the main argument against the new APM calculation is that certain actions taken by players is not "spamming," and that these count as actions too because a player will perform them more often when they're playing better.

But I think we should take a step back and analyze what your goals are as a player, and what function tapping performs.

If you were to be the perfect player, you would have perfect macro with your build; that is, you would always produce with the maximum efficiency that the strategy you're implemented has allowed for. If your build was one barracks all game long, and that one barracks produced a marine every 15 seconds over the course of a 10 min game, you would have produced a marine 40 times. You would have selected your barracks 40 times, and 80 overall APM would have gone towards marine production.

A player that has difficulty remembering when to produce marines or if they were producing one in the first place (amidst the chaos, horrible memory, horrible timing, etc) would probably randomly tap his barracks to look at it a few times.
This means that a player that's worse at remembering to do stuff will have higher APM. The player that's better at remembering will have lower APM. Why? Because in the end they're accomplishing the same goals. Macrowise they're doing the same thing.

Tapping is a crutch. Some might argue that it's a necessary one, and that might be true for a while. But that doesn't change what tapping accomplishes. Which is absolutely nothing unless you don't have perfect timings.

Perfection in this game is what we're trying to reach. What this current APM calculation does is show us how much is being done in game. Yes, this is not how much YOU are doing. But this is irrelevant to the game. What matters is how much you get done, not how inefficient you are at doing the same thing your opponent is. If a zerg double taps his queens twice in an injection cycle, that's wasted time that zerg could be using to scout, attack, micro, etc. A better zerg will be accomplishing more and double tapping at the exact moment they need to inject.

Remember when the game first came out and everyone had shitty injects? Now it's pretty normal for my lower leagued friends to have perfect injects up until at least the 12 min mark. Pros are obviously way better.

This APM indication is not punishing anyone unless you care about a statistic that actually shows how inefficient you are. The argument that multiple clicking raises this APM is silly, because you know that not only is this difficult to implement but mass clicking has its own punishment. You can only click on your screen. Mass clicking is a waste of time and vision (not factoring in minimap vision here, it's sometimes the only thing needed, other times it's not useful - scouting etc).

So yes, now you see players with decent macro have APM closer to pros, and you have people with subpar macro drop significantly in APM. You have players who have decent macro but did a lot of double, triple, infinite checking to keep that up have APM similar to someone with decent timings and equivalent macro.

I don't see how this is a bad thing.

- player A does manage constant SCV production from 3 CCs and it takes her/him avg. 10 cycling through the CCs
- player B does manage constant SCV production from 3 CCs and it takes her/him avg. 5 cycling through the CCs
- player C does manage constant SCV production from 3 CCs and she/he doesn't need to cycle around because s/he is simply so well trained to the point that s/he never forgets it without even looking at CCs.