I'd like to open a discussion on what the hell the new in-game APM really means. I wouldn't really bother but since they added that cute performance tab it kinda got me wanting to improve my mechanics. But the new APM... is just blowing my mind. I mean going from 100 to 300 APM, really? So I just need to understand what the hell it really is.
What I have figured so far. 1. It is NOT maximum APM. It DOES sometimes get lower at the start of the game. But as the game goes on for at least 10 minutes it basicly never decreases (with one huge exception). 2. In long team games (not sure about how long but 10 minutes is not long enough but 20 is) after at least one player leaves the game ALL players take a huge APM drop. The most common thing to notice would be a drop from 250s to 150s. After another player leaves another drop occurs. On average from 150s to 100-110s. Also there is no drop when the last player from the team leaves the game (since the game ends, naturally) so there is no drop in 1v1s. Update: ok not all players take a drop, only the ones who stay. And if you were the first to leave the game there will be probably no drop in game stats for you at the score screen (not confirmed). Also the drop is a bit disproportional. 3. APM sometimes rises even after some low-APM periods (current APM is lower than average APM) which doesn't make sense.
Some ideas as to what has changed:
1) edit: proved wrong by Befree. Normal time instead of Blizzard's time which alone would increase APM by 37(?)% 2) edit: proved wrong by TheRabidDeer. Camera movements are now taken into account. 3) APM now counts not all actions in the game but only in the most intensive periods of the game. 4) edit: proved wrong by ALPINA. Has been around for a long time. Holding down production keys, especially for zerg, now counts as different actions.
Important UPDATE: The latest idea was inspired by lolphind and developed by grigorin. There is some kind of the average APM inflation which occurs at specific moments in time. Effectively at those moments a multiplier to average APM is added with cumulative effect.The most prominent ones are at 4:15 (255 seconds), 8:31 (511),17:03 (1023), and probably 34:07 (2047). Usually at that time average APM is stable enough to see big swings and I also suspect the % value of APM inflation is higher (15-20%) than during earlier ones. Earlier moments of APM inflation are at 2:07 (127 seconds), 1:03 (63), 0:31, and maybe 0:15 and 0:07 but APM is too volatile at those points and the % of APM increase is probably less than at later periods. So basicly if the the game lasted 20 minutes the average APM will be equal to real average APM multiplied by all the multipliers at 0:31, 1:03, 2:07, 4:15, 8:31, 17:03 and maybe by earlier multipliers which are not yet confirmed. So while we don't know the values of multipliers, if they are fixed or not, it's not that important. The important part is that we finally understand the mechanism of APM inflation.
For those who haven't noticed I'd like to point out the almost binary sequence of the timer count of APM multipliers: 31=32-1 63=64-1 127=128-1 255=256-1 511=512-1 1023=1024-1
It starts off right then.. does not drop as quickly as it should
ok i give up... test conditions: 50 or 100 commands in first or second minute of game
what i found out is: - increase in avrg apm (despite 0 actual apm for a long time) at timer count: 63 (1:03) ,127 (2:07),255 (4:15),511(8:31) maybe 1023 (17:03) looks like some kind of overflow error (if not purposely apm buff implemented by blizzard) - avrg apm update almost always (99%) on odd timer count during periods of 0 apm - I have no clue how blizz calculates avrg apm ^_^
im not 100% sure about how its mesearued but i am sure that my APM is far to high according to SC2 compared to what it really is. I'm just assuming they are using ingame minutes and are counting every single action as an action.
To avoid making a new thread, as the question is related, I'd like to ask how the APM was measured in BW? Was it the same as how SC2 is measured or is it different (I think BW is slightly slower paced in game-speed, how would this affect the numbers etc?)
Anytime APM is brought up I always think of InControl on State of the Game. I don't want to misquote as I don't remember exactly what he said but it was something along the lines/idea of 50 years in the future we'll be flying around on space ships and teleporting and doing some sort of future shit that is incredible, yet Blizzard will still be fucking up APM somehow(he said it better, but it was funny).
I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
On February 21 2013 00:18 Cheerio wrote: I'd like to open a discussion on what the hell the new in-game APM really means. I wouldn't really bother but since they added that cute performance tab it kinda got me wanting to improve my mechanics. But the new APM... is just blowing my mind. I mean going from 100 to 300 APM, really? So I just need to understand what the hell it really is.
What I have figured so far. 1. It is NOT maximum APM. It DOES sometimes get lower at the start of the game. But as the game goes on for at least 10 minutes it basicly never decreases (with one huge exception). 2. In long teamgames (not sure about how long but 10 minutes is not long enough but 20 is) after at least one player leaves the game ALL player take a huge APM drop. The most common thing to notice would be a drop from 250s to 150s. After another player leaves another drop occurs. On average from 150s to 100-110s. 3. Average APM rises quickly after APM-intensive periods. It also sometimes rises even after some low-APM periods (current APM is lower than average APM) which makes me think there is some strange bugged algorithm that takes into account only the most APM-intensive moments of the game.
I've noticed that weird drop in APM in team games. I have like 330 APM / 180 EPM all game, and it goes down to 250 / 140 at the end. Other players are not always affected by that drop, btw.
Edit: I'm quite convinced that it's now per real seconds and not Blizzard seconds. It seems consistent with my WoL APM.
I played HOTS placements matches a few weeks back, and my bronze opponent had like 200 APM. I guess it made him feel good too! So i'm all for it gj Blizz
APM has always been weird anyway. When everyone plays a game where 90 ingame seconds (fastest speed) is about 65 real life seconds.. You gotta wonder how all those "Actions per minute" (which minute ?) are calcultated.
It's just some fake apm to make everyone feel good.
Nope, the average protoss player still has 1/3 of what zergs and terran have. I think they just switched it to real time and absolute (like it counts everything including cameras movements etc) so it appears quite higher, but it still reliable to compare your games anyway. Gotta wait for SC2 gears update
On February 21 2013 00:29 FLuE wrote: Anytime APM is brought up I always think of InControl on State of the Game. I don't want to misquote as I don't remember exactly what he said but it was something along the lines/idea of 50 years in the future we'll be flying around on space ships and teleporting and doing some sort of future shit that is incredible, yet Blizzard will still be fucking up APM somehow(he said it better, but it was funny).
I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
Ye, seriously. It's already a mostly useless stat, since apm != multitasking, so just leave apm = actions / minute (crazy right??) and be done with it.
Also, I really wanna know what values merz is getting
Meh... My APM sometimes gets to 600 and averages 180 to 200 and I am not even that fast (really, I am not). I think they should just say how the APM is actually measured so people that care about APM can improve based on a stupid number.
I really like the time supply capped measurement, though. THAT is going to make people improve a lot. It is a number that makes you feel embarrassed, so you can actually try to improve.
On February 21 2013 00:29 FLuE wrote: Anytime APM is brought up I always think of InControl on State of the Game. I don't want to misquote as I don't remember exactly what he said but it was something along the lines/idea of 50 years in the future we'll be flying around on space ships and teleporting and doing some sort of future shit that is incredible, yet Blizzard will still be fucking up APM somehow(he said it better, but it was funny).
I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
Ye, seriously. It's already a mostly useless stat, since apm != multitasking, so just leave apm = actions / minute (crazy right??) and be done with it.
Also, I really wanna know what values merz is getting
I read that as "apm entails multitasking" You meant "=/=", right?
I hope its some bug and not yet another change that will make lower players feel better. Its kinda useles when you see the old 150 apm players now getting 300 :D
On February 21 2013 00:29 FLuE wrote: Anytime APM is brought up I always think of InControl on State of the Game. I don't want to misquote as I don't remember exactly what he said but it was something along the lines/idea of 50 years in the future we'll be flying around on space ships and teleporting and doing some sort of future shit that is incredible, yet Blizzard will still be fucking up APM somehow(he said it better, but it was funny).
I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
Ye, seriously. It's already a mostly useless stat, since apm != multitasking, so just leave apm = actions / minute (crazy right??) and be done with it.
Also, I really wanna know what values merz is getting
I read that as "apm entails multitasking" You meant "=/=", right?
A != B means "A is not equal to B" /= also works, I guess. But, no, generally, I think "!=" represents "not equal to".
It says my APM is over 200 almost every game now, even when I feel like I am playing slow. I think it is a load of bunk. I am not that fast and I don't even spam at the start of games.
Also, it was funny earlier in HOTS beta when games were running at slow speed (not because of lag, but actually at slow speed, it was a bug of some type) and I would have 400+ APM, though playing Zerg I still have over 300 APM when playing a normal game. The production must really mess with it or something.
I have 250 apm in BW and got on last night to goof around with the new stuff and had about 190 apm + lag so I'll be sure to try and max it out tonight for the lolz.
On February 21 2013 00:29 FLuE wrote: Anytime APM is brought up I always think of InControl on State of the Game. I don't want to misquote as I don't remember exactly what he said but it was something along the lines/idea of 50 years in the future we'll be flying around on space ships and teleporting and doing some sort of future shit that is incredible, yet Blizzard will still be fucking up APM somehow(he said it better, but it was funny).
I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
Ye, seriously. It's already a mostly useless stat, since apm != multitasking, so just leave apm = actions / minute (crazy right??) and be done with it.
Also, I really wanna know what values merz is getting
I read that as "apm entails multitasking" You meant "=/=", right?
A != B means "A is not equal to B" /= also works, I guess. But, no, generally, I think "!=" represents "not equal to".
I believe he is referring to mathematical notation, not code?
On February 21 2013 00:31 Jarree wrote: I played HOTS placements matches a few weeks back, and my bronze opponent had like 200 APM. I guess it made him feel good too! So i'm all for it gj Blizz
There are at least plat level NA/EU players in the HotS beta bronze. Just saying, though 1) 200 is high for even that level and 2) it's definitely inflated in some weird way. I had a bump of almost 200 apm in the beta I think.
On February 21 2013 00:29 FLuE wrote: Anytime APM is brought up I always think of InControl on State of the Game. I don't want to misquote as I don't remember exactly what he said but it was something along the lines/idea of 50 years in the future we'll be flying around on space ships and teleporting and doing some sort of future shit that is incredible, yet Blizzard will still be fucking up APM somehow(he said it better, but it was funny).
I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
Ye, seriously. It's already a mostly useless stat, since apm != multitasking, so just leave apm = actions / minute (crazy right??) and be done with it.
Also, I really wanna know what values merz is getting
I read that as "apm entails multitasking" You meant "=/=", right?
It's programmer talk, != means not equal in most languages.
I've wanted to write this guide for a while and as it turns out a whole weekend without high speed internet is bad for my sanity. Plus it'd be fun to troll people that keep bitching about too much Protoss stuff. Let me know what you guys think; do you think it'd be better as a simple [G] thread or a featured article? I still need to format it properly, add a bunch of vods, edit it, add screenshots.
2 Base Templar PvT
Intro
Colossus builds have been prevalent throughout HotS, but some players (First, Parting, Flying and sOs in particular) have been going for Templar first play with great success. The HotS changes impacted this playstyle greatly, thanks to a cheaper dark shrine and, more importantly, the added defensive capabilities of the mothership core and the power of faster warp prisms.
Indeed, the biggest advantage given by not rushing colossus tech is that your robo build time is freed up, allowing you to invest in a fast observer network and warp prisms. These two tools are extremely valuable in defending a well timed third base, harassing and keeping map control. The ability of stressing an opponent’s multitasking and forcing mistakes is very powerful, and it’s very rewarding to beat an opponent while forcing and punishing mistake after mistake.
Many consider this style harder to pull off than colossus play, but it’s way more fun and actually not that difficult to master. Personally, after about one year of playing exclusively templar first builds I am much better with this than with colossus play, and I find it to be easier to execute too.
Early Game
This style opens with some sort of fast expand to get a strong economy going. There are many different variations on 1gate Fe out there; my favorite variation (stolen and adapted from NonY) is the following:
9 pylon
13 gate
14 gas
16 pylon
18 Core scout, check for a CC and a reaper. The build doesn’t vary enough to justify an earlier scout.
19/21 Zealot, I generally let it finish to avoid any kind of early ebay annoying crap. You cancel it if you want to.
23/26 Nexus, mothership core with first 100 gas.
24 Pylon
25 Gas
Warpgate with the next 50 gas.
Stalker as soon as resources allow, move out with it on the map.
Robo as soon as gas allows.
Forge at 5:55, get +1 armor as soon as it’s done.
Sentry after Stalker.
2 extra gates as resources allow.
You should be using your initial probe and stalker to poke around the map and get a read on what your opponent is doing; clearing the xel’naga towers from the reaper with your stalker is particularly useful since it keeps your opponent in the dark.
The things you should be worried about are:
Is he going gassless expand, or did he take a gas?
Is he doing some 111 harassment opening like a widow mine drop, hellions or banshees, is he rushing for medivacs or did he do a greedy 3cc opening?
Be aware of the timings at which any push might come. As a general rule, if he is including a reasonably fast CC (around 4:30) his push/drop will hit between the 8:00 and 8:30 minute mark while if he decides to delay his CC he will attack at about 7:00, or even 6:00 if he opened gas first.
As you scout, look for:
Gas vs no gas. If he opens gassless don’t get any defensive cannons. Note that it’s possible to go for 111 after fast expanding, but you should be able to see this with an obs.
Reaper vs no reaper: if he goes gas and doesn’t go reaper, get one cannon per mineral line.
Timing on the CC: if you don’t see a CC after about the 4:30 map, get one cannon per mineral line.
Your build changes slightly to adapt to what the Terran is doing. If he goes for 3rax+medivac you should get a Sentry as your 4th gateway unit and immediately get 2extra gates and tech going; the specific build orders are written in the next section.
If he’s trying to do harassment on the other hand you have to play more carefully. Get defensive cannons before the extra gates as well as a stalker instead of a second sentry for some extra DPS. Keep the msc in the main grouped with an observer if the cannons are late, and be ready to use a nexus cannon in the main while warping in extra reinforcements; pull probes away and let the cannon and planetary nexus finish off the dropped widow mines and marines. At this stage you should be extremely careful with your main army. Do not commit it to the main to try and snipe the medivac or clear off the drop faster unless you know the units dropped are the only ones out on the map. A popular variation on widow mine drops is to delay the CC to get 4 hellions and go for a runby into the natural, hoping your army will be busy in the main. A single cannon can not take down all the hellions before they roast half your probes, which is why you need to play safely.
screenshot of defensive cannons started
If he kills 6 or so probes you should be about even, if he kills less you are ahead, and if he kills more you are behind.
Mid Game
Once your Natural is well saturated take the gasses there; normally this is at around the 7 minute mark as with most PvT builds. From here on go up to 2 sentries and then start teching up to charge and templar and keep the upgrades going, while the Terran starts his midgame pressure as he takes his third.
Against a medivac push, do the following build:
Units off the robo: 2x obs, warp prism, 1x obs.
7:30: Twilight council as +1 armor is halfway done.
8:45" Gates 4 and 5.
Charge and +2 armor when the council completes.
Templar archives as gas allows after starting charge, warp in 2 templar and start storm as soon as it completes.
9:50: Gates 6 and 7 at around.
11 to 12 minutes: Third nexus.
One extra observer for a total of 4.
Assuming you are playing against a medivac timing, rally the warp prism across the map and get ready to drop 4 zealots in his main slightly after seeing him move out, when his army is about one third of the way across the map. This move is essential, as it buys time for your storm and +2 armor to complete and for the extra gates to kick in. While in WoL it was impossible to hold a medivac timing if you went for storm, robo and upgrades at the same time, the added dps of the mothership core means you can be slightly greedier, getting a faster storm and pressuring with the warp prism while still being able to defend thanks to feedback and an archon.
If he tries to commit to his medivac timing while ignoring the zealots in the main you should defend with chargelot/archon plus the nexus cannon, trying to feedback the medivacs before morphing the archon. Meanwhile, he’s going to lose addons, scv’s and reinforcements to your dropped zealots, which are incredibly strong if the Terran doesn’t micro against them (and unless he is Innovation, he can’t micro on two fronts at the same time). Depending on the map layout it might be easier or harder to get zealots into the mineral line. If you can’t hit it you can still go after addons or key buildings like armories and ebays. Taking out the reactor on his starport is particularly strong.
screenshot of zealots wrecking shit
If instead he is going mech or 3cc you can be greedy and take your third off 3 gates before getting your infrastructure up, while teching normally. If he is playing greedy try to match his greed; cut units shortly for production facilities and a second forge instead of making a defensive army that won’t be useful when he isn’t going to push. You still want to get a warp prism out eventually but you don’t need it as fast: get observers in position first, increase your templar count and start immortal production if he goes mech.
Robo/Forge/twilight builds are extremely versatile, and they have various follow-ups they can go into. The most common ones are:
DT drop
A popular option is to go for a DT drop off 2bases, delaying storm and charge in exchange for much more powerful harassment. While this variation can be done against any build, it can be somewhat tricky to hold off a medivac timing, and depending on how well the Terran defends the DT's you can be severely behind. On the other hand, it's a great choice against harassment builds, and was extremely popular before the hellbat nerf when terrans were rushing for a starport and armory rather than going for medivac pushes.
(when behind, dark shrine. Or when ahead; screenshot of yoshi's workers being killed)
Here is a recommended build order against a medivac timing:
1Gate expand, make one extra sentry for a total of 3.
6:30: Natural gasses.
Units off the robo: 2x obs, warp prism, 1x obs, immortal 3x.
7:00: Twilight council.
As soon as the council completes: charge, +1 attack and dark shrine as gas allows, in this order.
8:40: Gates 4 and 5.
9:05: Gates 6 and 7.
Templar archives after defending the medivac timing, at about 11:30.
Take a third behind the harassment once the Terran stops being aggressive, this should be between the 11 and 13 minute mark.
The goal of the DT’s is to delay him and punish him for getting caught out of position or for messing up earlier in the game, while allowing you to take a normally timed third with a relatively small army. Because DT’s are such a big investment, you have to be extremely careful with them: do not suicide them and do not overmake them. As usual, the general rule is to go up to 6 or 7 gates before taking a third against bio timings, and to do it faster against 3cc or mech. To strengthen your army, mix in some (2-4) immortals after you get the warp prism out.
Similar to the DT drop, this is a build Trap utilized against Supernova on Akilon Wastes. The idea behind it is fairly similar to the standard chargelot build: get just enough to hold a straight up push, while harassing and killing as many scvs as possible with a warp prism. Because it’s close to impossible to get storm done together with a robo and upgrades against a medivac push, this build delays the forge, focusing on faster templar tech and a robo instead.
Standard 1 Gate expand
Initial 250 gas: warpgate, 2 stalkers, msc
5:20: Second Gate
5:50: Twilight council
6:15 and 6:35: Natural gasses
Next 100 gas: sentry
6:40: Templar archives
7:00: Robo
Storm started, 1 templar as soon as archives finish and gas allows
Off the robo: warp prism before observers
8:00: Forge
Extra gates as normal, play out the game as you would with the standard build.
The most aggressive variation of 2base robo/twilight, this build was used first by KT protoss players. It delays storm in favor of a faster second forge, archons and immortals, to go for a powerful midgame timing that can easily break any unprepared opponent without being an outright all-in build. It is also very strong against mech on maps with a fairly open space in front of the third such as Planet S and Whirlwind. Jaypower already covered this build here
Defending the Third and transitioning
Defending your third is a matter of correct positioning, good micro and good scouting. In general, templar are much stronger defensively than colossi, while having less potential for straight up attacks (more on this later).
At this point you should have 4 observers out on the map keeping watch on the Terran. I like to keep 3 close to my bases, watching for drops and pushes, while having one out scouting what he’s doing. The things you are looking for are his 3rd cc as well as its timing, plus some more opportunities to sneak zealots/dts in his main and/or third and do more damage.
As a general rule: 3rax>cc>5rax means light aggression after the medivac push and a more passive Terran until his 2/2 completes. 3rax>>5rax>>cc means heavy aggression coming your way. 5+rax and no 3rd cc means a likely incoming 2base allin, with an scv paintrain. The remaining 3 observers should be moved in key locations to watch your bases and make sure you know where his army is. Here are a few screenshots of good observer spots on ladder maps: + Show Spoiler +
Start a second forge when you see him taking a third, get ready for the longer game with colossus/blink tech or go for a timing if you want to finish the game faster.
Transitioning into colossus is fairly game dependant. If your opponent is being very aggressive you want to do it more slowly, getting a good gateway count up first (8-10) and making sure you have good drop defense ready with 1-2 cannons and a templar in position. Going double robo is risky against a very aggressive opponent, and many Korean pros in fact prefer sticking to a single robo for a while. On the other hand, if he’s playing very passively and/or your harassment did lots of damage and/or you are ahead because you killed many of his medivacs or successfully defended an aggressive push, you can afford to be greedier with a double robo before any extra warpgates.
At this point it’s vital to buy as much time as possible for your econ and second tech to kick in, so remain active with your harassment; remember to replace the warp prism if you lost it earlier on. You can start mixing in storm drops as well, which are devastating against an unprepared or slow opponent. Get pylons on the map, especially near his third and fourth, and warp in zealots from there: your robo time isn’t free anymore as you switch to colossus, so you can’t afford to remake warp prisms as easily, especially off a single robo.
(screenshot of map control/harassment)
As you get close to maxing out you also want to tech to blink while trading away a few zealots for more gas intensive units like colossi, archons, extra templars spread all over the map and a group of blink stalkers, so keep up the runbys and harassment!
A second possibility is to not go for colossus for a while and stick to pure gateway units for longer, going up to 11/12 gates. This is harder to pull off and much more micro intensive, but if you are either ahead from the early/midgame or he’s still 2basing you, it can be a strong option. If you want to finish the game faster, try to use your warp prism to draw him out of position while going for a strong 3base, mass warpgate attack before he can get enough ghosts or hellbats to stop your templar army. With this style you can play more aggressively, harass for longer and deny the terran’s 4th while taking your own, but your maxed army will be weaker than with a colossus switch. Note that eventually you are forced into having both aoe units; get colossus tech up after taking your 4th at the latest.
(finishing the game off with pure gate units)
A final possible transition, still very unexplored, is skipping colossus entirely and going for tempests on 3bases, using them to siege and zone out terran units while the high templar protect them. Because this style is very new and not nearly close to figured out I won’t talk about it In depth, but it might be worth playing around with it on some maps.
FAQs
Is this style viable on every map? Yep!
I am in league x, am I ready to do this build or is it too hard for me? Hell yeah, go for it. It takes practice but it’s really damn fun, so why not. Worst case scenario grab a practice partner or play unranked. I’ve played this style for so long I actually find it easier than colossus builds now. If you find it too hard to execute try cutting out the warp prism harassment at first.
He did a weird push before medivacs and killed me because I was too greedy, how can I hold it? You should be able to hold most pushes thanks to the mothership core and careful scouting. To make sure you see any kind of push coming before your observer crosses the map and scouts him, keep the initial stalker in front of his nat and watch the minimap carefully. This isn’t as important as it was in WoL, but it’s very useful regardless. Cut tech and chrono out units the instant you see him moving out.
Why a single forge and not double forge? I have never been a big fan of fast 2base double forge together with templar play. There is a timing when you want to get 3/3 and a bunch of templar up with it but the gas is never enough, so what usually happens is the 3/3 gets delayed. I personally think that if you are going to delay 3/3 a bit then you might as well go for the single forge and maximize the number of units you can get. Additionally, you can get the forge extremely quickly without being punished, which makes your upgrades very fast anyway as well as helping in defending various harassment builds.
Is it possible to play aggressively with this build? Are there any timings to hit? If you try to push across the map with a chargelot/templar army and meet him halfway through the map your zealots will get kited while leaving the templar behind and unable to land any storms. On the other hand, if he is attacking into you he will run straight toward the templar, exposing himself to storm (and making you feel fucking awesome when you land them). It’s also easier to land storms when your opponent is bunched up and backed in a corner, for example at his natural expansion. Keeping this in mind, while it is possible to play aggressively with this army composition, it’s a lot easier to defend and harass with it, especially because the Terran can’t really micro on two fronts effectively, making your chargelots deadly. With a colossus army you might be able to amove across the map and win, but with a gateway army you need more careful positioning and army movement or you risk missing key storms or losing zealots for nothing. For example in one of the linked games, Trap loses against supernova because he wastes 3-4 storms trying to break a third that wasn’t even started yet, and as a result he doesn’t have enough to defend supernova’s counter attack despite having +3 armor and a superior economy. That said, the warp prisms really help with keeping the terran back, so it’s possible to push across the map once storm and a key upgrade (like +2 or +3 armor) is done, especially if you are ahead after defending a timing or harassing him.
What do I do against mech? I believe that this kind of opening is superior vs mech compared to colossus builds. You have more map control, harassment tools, a fast third and access to immortals early on, all of which are very strong in that spot. Obviously, you need to add immortals to your composition to take care of the tanks. Try to engage him in the open field while he’s unsieged, and if you can bring a warp prism to drop or warp zealots on top of his tanks for extra man points. Additionally, storm does pretty well against hellbats and hellions, and it lets your zealots and immortals close in on the tanks. I like going double robo immortal as well once I secure my third.
What do I do if he’s doing a 2base allin with thor/banshee or tank/banshee? Against that kind of allin you can easily get storm up in time, so go for it asap while getting your immortal count up. A good sample vod of such a hold (even though it’s a wol game) is Hero vs Supernova on Atlantis Spaceship.
How can I land storms when he has a very high ghost count? I won’t go in the details of lategame PvT as kcdc already covered them a while ago, but you want to keep some templar spread out as much as possible and hidden in weird, random locations all over the map. In a straight up fight you will definitely lose without landing storms and it’s almost impossible to micro effectively against high ghost counts: your only choice is to surprise the terran from awkward angles, forcing him to eat storm after storm as he moves on the map while you avoid engaging with your main army. If you can land a couple of good storms or feedbacks and get his army lower on health you can engage and kill him.
The APM relates to the real life 60 seconds,not ingame seconds,and that is why everyone has increased APM because real life minute is longer than ingame minute.
Since the majority of games are played at faster game speed, in game seconds should be based on that speed and not normal. It makes no sense to have the timer based on a rarely used setting. If Blizz is afraid of changing the game speed name from "faster" to "normal", they could always change it to "competitive" or maybe "tournament" (just off the top of my head). Why does it have to be this complicated, lets fix the way the timer advances and put forward an APM stat that isn't so hard to understand. It'd also be great if Blizz would tell us the formula they use to compute APM and why they think that's the best way to do it.
On February 21 2013 00:29 FLuE wrote: I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
Yes, it's really hard to understand what justifies an abomination like Blizzard minutes. I really can't wrap my head around it.
Did they ever say how exactly how they counted apm for any patches?(as the exact actions that count as apm and eapm, the way scgears does on their page)
On February 21 2013 00:29 FLuE wrote: I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
Yes, it really hard to understand what justifies an abomination like Blizzard minutes. I really can't wrap my head around it.
Somebody liked the idea of Valve time and decided to make their own at Blizzard.
I'm not sure what it counts, because I get like 110 extra apm in HotS. In BW and WoL I have a pretty steady ~300 apm but in HotS I have 410 which is not true...
On February 21 2013 00:24 mau5mat wrote: To avoid making a new thread, as the question is related, I'd like to ask how the APM was measured in BW? Was it the same as how SC2 is measured or is it different (I think BW is slightly slower paced in game-speed, how would this affect the numbers etc?)
APM in BW was measured by every action (minus screen locations) in a real-life minute. So every action, even the repetitive ones, were counted toward your APM. The in-game speed had no effect on the calculation. Your EAPM (effective actions per minute) would subtract the actions you tried to perform, but were limited due to resources. For example, spamming "P" to build a probe even though you only have 25 minerals.
On February 21 2013 01:46 Gosi wrote: I'm not sure what it counts, because I get like 110 extra apm in HotS. In BW and WoL I have a pretty steady ~300 apm but in HotS I have 410 which is not true...
well if they changed from blizzard time to normal time that explains it.
So some ideas as to what has changed: 1) Normal time instead of Blizzard's time which alone would increase APM by 37(?)% 2) Camera movements are now taken into account. 3) APM now counts not all actions in the game but only in the most intensive periods of the game. 4) Proved wrong by ALPINA . Has been around for a long time. Holding down production keys, especially for zerg, now counts as different actions.
Apm went from ~150 to ~270, so yeah it's definitely weird. I read somewhere that they might count screen scrolling as an action now, so that could account for some of it.
On February 21 2013 00:29 FLuE wrote: Anytime APM is brought up I always think of InControl on State of the Game. I don't want to misquote as I don't remember exactly what he said but it was something along the lines/idea of 50 years in the future we'll be flying around on space ships and teleporting and doing some sort of future shit that is incredible, yet Blizzard will still be fucking up APM somehow(he said it better, but it was funny).
I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
Also, I really wanna know what values merz is getting
On February 21 2013 00:24 mau5mat wrote: To avoid making a new thread, as the question is related, I'd like to ask how the APM was measured in BW? Was it the same as how SC2 is measured or is it different (I think BW is slightly slower paced in game-speed, how would this affect the numbers etc?)
APM in BW was measured by every action (minus screen locations) in a real-life minute. So every action, even the repetitive ones, were counted toward your APM. The in-game speed had no effect on the calculation. Your EAPM (effective actions per minute) would subtract the actions you tried to perform, but were limited due to resources. For example, spamming "P" to build a probe even though you only have 25 minerals.
Thanks very much, SC2 apm is slightly behind 'real-time' apm isn't it? Would it not just make sense to make everything real-time, as BW's apm counter was?
Are you guys pulling the APM number from the score screen or from the replay? The score screen numbers are really bugged, but the replay counter might be bugged too.
The biggest problems with fiddling so much with APM and not really explaining themselves when they do it, is largely more for viewers of tournaments where showing APM is a way to try to showcase the skill of the players visually. As an improvment tool APM is fairly meaningless, you can pretty much tell if you are playing fast enough or not from a replay without looking at APM as a measure, though it might be useful to see small gradual improvement if it was a consistent formula. Largely I'd like to see it stay consistent just so as an observer tool it wouldn't need constant re explaining to audiences as to what they are looking at.
I think this is a glitch and they will fix it soon, if not then its a stupid system. It really annoys me because I am trying to improve my apm and can't tell if its inflated or what, cause i doubt i doubled my apm in 1 day.
On February 21 2013 00:29 FLuE wrote: Anytime APM is brought up I always think of InControl on State of the Game. I don't want to misquote as I don't remember exactly what he said but it was something along the lines/idea of 50 years in the future we'll be flying around on space ships and teleporting and doing some sort of future shit that is incredible, yet Blizzard will still be fucking up APM somehow(he said it better, but it was funny).
I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
Ye, seriously. It's already a mostly useless stat, since apm != multitasking, so just leave apm = actions / minute (crazy right??) and be done with it.
Also, I really wanna know what values merz is getting
I read that as "apm entails multitasking" You meant "=/=", right?
It's programmer talk, != means not equal in most languages.
Ok, interesting. Yeah, I guess in mathematics it would be |= rather than != anyway. Good to know.
Maybe someone has already mentioned this, but I noticed that in the HotS beta (and I guess WoL since the patch), different players will sometimes see different APM values for certain players when viewing the score screen after a team game. I was playing a 2v2 with a friend on skype, and when we looked at the score screen after a game, he saw (drastically) different APM-values for one of the players. We saw the same values for the other three players, though.
This has probably something to do with how internally each action is interpreted. For example, selecting idle workers might be interpreted as a different action per worker. Selecting all larvae and creating 100 lings could also be interpreted as a single action or as multiple actions. We might have to investigate how the game records this actions in the replays, but that could have changed as well.
On February 21 2013 02:44 RaZorwire wrote: Maybe someone has already mentioned this, but I noticed that in the HotS beta (and I guess WoL since the patch), different players will sometimes see different APM values for certain players when viewing the score screen after a team game. I was playing a 2v2 with a friend on skype, and when we looked at the score screen after a game, he saw (drastically) different APM-values for one of the players. We saw the same values for the other three players, though.
Can't imagine that being anything but a bug.
Did you lose that game? If you did it gets explained by
2. In long team games (not sure about how long but 10 minutes is not long enough but 20 is) after at least one player leaves the game ALL players take a huge APM drop. The most common thing to notice would be a drop from 250s to 150s. After another player leaves another drop occurs. On average from 150s to 100-110s. Also there is no drop when the last player from the team leaves the game (since the game ends, naturally) so there is no drop in 1v1s. Update: ok not all players take a drop, only the ones who stay. Also the drop is a bit disproportional.
It shouldn't really be a hard thing to fix the APM tab for blizzard... I mean just make every ingame click count and then don't mess around with it. They manipulate it so much it's now became a mess.
On February 21 2013 02:54 NinjaAUS wrote: I'm at 350-450 apm in hots 1v1's, I think they reverted it back to how WoL was before they made the change to apm and added in EPM?
I never had 300 APM in WoL, in fact I never had 200. There is no way some kind of reversion explains the hole thing.
One thing that should be noted is that APM, aside from just feeling good about yourself if its "over 100!," is that it is consistently calculated. Because the value is really in the comparison more than the actual number. It doesn't matter if my APM is 300, what matters is my APM is 300, and a pro is 700 and then I can go "wow he is doing more than twice as many actions per minute than I do!" Or that my APM is 200, and my friends is only 100 I can then brag about my ePeen. It is the comparison that is what makes APM cool to see, not the actual number.
That is where the value lies, and since that is the case I think it is as simple as 2 basic rules :
1 - Pick a system, and just stick with it. We don't need effective APM, and regular APM, and APM excluding this action, and then Super APM, and then Super Modified APM, and then APM real time, and then APM Blizzard time etc. etc.. Just calculate anytime an action is made, which is anytime a button is clicked. And if Blizzard wants to remove certain things from that calculation then fine, Blizzard needs to just clearly define an action and have 1 APM measurement and stick with it. Done.
2 - Pick a system that skews toward higher numbers. This is why I hated eAPM vs. just APM. For the casual player, the higher the number the better they feel so that is good-done. For pro play and hyping SC, you want to be able to advertise some guy doing 400+ actions per minute with a live shot of the persons hands moving faster than hell. So come up with a system that yields higher numbers instead of lower as that is what everyone will get more excited about.
At that point you have high numbers, that are consistent and can be compared. Everyone wins.
If those two things are followed than everything should be fine. The further we get into SC2 the less people will compare BW APM vs. SC2 APM so we need to just move away from that- it will never be a valid comparison because of how things are already messed up with the blizzard minute and all. Although it would be interesting everything is so messed up that hoping to have that option is just not needed compared to cleaning up the current situation.
On February 21 2013 02:57 FLuE wrote: One thing that should be noted is that APM, aside from just feeling good about yourself if its "over 100!," is that it is consistently calculated. Because the value is really in the comparison more than the actual number. It doesn't matter if my APM is 300, what matters is my APM is 300, and a pro is 700 and then I can go "wow he is doing more than twice as many actions per minute than I do!" Or that my APM is 200, and my friends is only 100 I can then brag about my ePeen. It is the comparison that is what makes APM cool to see, not the actual number.
That is where the value lies.
I agree. I will occasionally check my game history in sc2gears and look at how my APM for certain games. A lower APM usually means I was too busy thinking about what I should be doing in a game that I forgot to actually do stuff. It's a good queue to go back and analyze the situation where my APM dropped to figure out how I should react to the same kind of situation in the future.
The APM on the score screen isn't "APM" it's an "APM score" kind of like your army efficiency and such. It's a number that is calculated based on your actual APM I would guess, and is used for leveling/XP purposes.
On February 21 2013 03:37 aike wrote: The APM on the score screen isn't "APM" it's an "APM score" kind of like your army efficiency and such. It's a number that is calculated based on your actual APM I would guess, and is used for leveling/XP purposes.
I think you might be on to something here. But that's just silly. That or it's just bugged.
I did a quick test yesterday and made a short video.
During the video I was spamming build probe. The whole time but the only effective actions taken were building 3 probes and setting 1 rally over 1 minute, yet my epm is averaged to be 42 at the end.
On February 21 2013 03:37 aike wrote: The APM on the score screen isn't "APM" it's an "APM score" kind of like your army efficiency and such. It's a number that is calculated based on your actual APM I would guess, and is used for leveling/XP purposes.
why then the average APM displayed while watching a replay is basicly the same thing as the one at score screen? If its just for the purpose of rewarding experience why would you show it's calculation in a replay?
On February 21 2013 02:44 RaZorwire wrote: Maybe someone has already mentioned this, but I noticed that in the HotS beta (and I guess WoL since the patch), different players will sometimes see different APM values for certain players when viewing the score screen after a team game. I was playing a 2v2 with a friend on skype, and when we looked at the score screen after a game, he saw (drastically) different APM-values for one of the players. We saw the same values for the other three players, though.
Can't imagine that being anything but a bug.
Did you lose that game? If you did it gets explained by
2. In long team games (not sure about how long but 10 minutes is not long enough but 20 is) after at least one player leaves the game ALL players take a huge APM drop. The most common thing to notice would be a drop from 250s to 150s. After another player leaves another drop occurs. On average from 150s to 100-110s. Also there is no drop when the last player from the team leaves the game (since the game ends, naturally) so there is no drop in 1v1s. Update: ok not all players take a drop, only the ones who stay. Also the drop is a bit disproportional.
Sorry if I'm missing something, but that doesn't really explain what happened. We only saw different APM values for one player - if all the ones who stayed in the game got APM drops, we'd be seeing different values for three (all except whoever left first), right?
On February 21 2013 00:29 FLuE wrote: Anytime APM is brought up I always think of InControl on State of the Game. I don't want to misquote as I don't remember exactly what he said but it was something along the lines/idea of 50 years in the future we'll be flying around on space ships and teleporting and doing some sort of future shit that is incredible, yet Blizzard will still be fucking up APM somehow(he said it better, but it was funny).
I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
Ye, seriously. It's already a mostly useless stat, since apm != multitasking, so just leave apm = actions / minute (crazy right??) and be done with it.
Also, I really wanna know what values merz is getting
Its simply not a causal relationship. APM =/=> Multitask BUT Multitask => APM
The more you multitask, the higher your APM. It's simply not translatable the other way.
On February 21 2013 00:29 FLuE wrote: Anytime APM is brought up I always think of InControl on State of the Game. I don't want to misquote as I don't remember exactly what he said but it was something along the lines/idea of 50 years in the future we'll be flying around on space ships and teleporting and doing some sort of future shit that is incredible, yet Blizzard will still be fucking up APM somehow(he said it better, but it was funny).
I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
Ye, seriously. It's already a mostly useless stat, since apm != multitasking, so just leave apm = actions / minute (crazy right??) and be done with it.
Also, I really wanna know what values merz is getting
Its simply not a causal relationship. APM =/=> Multitask BUT Multitask => APM
The more you multitask, the higher your APM. It's simply not translatable the other way.
Super quick comment on causality: causality cannot simply be equivalent (valid in both directions). We want to accept that low air pressure makes a barometer show low air pressure. That seems to be a causal relationship. But a malfunctioning barometer showing low air pressure is not accepted as creating low air pressure. One wouldn't even accept that a functional barometer shoing low air pressure causes low air pressure.
On February 21 2013 00:29 FLuE wrote: I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
Yes, it's really hard to understand what justifies an abomination like Blizzard minutes. I really can't wrap my head around it.
Isn't that just because you don't play on normal speed but on faster?
I skimmed this thread and didnt see anyone posted this so I will. I dunno if it even matters, but I'm about a 250-270 apm player with terran. I basically only play terran lately and Im really only good with them.
But I played a match as Zerg the other day against another master terran, and I had 400 apm with zerg. I have no idea why really. My opponent was playing pretty quickly with like 320 apm, but I had easily an extra 150 apm just for playing zerg. I dunno what it is that is taken into account for zerg as opposed to terran but I figured id mention it. If youre playing zerg then your apm is probably going to be higher. As terran my apm is about the same as it was in wol.
Mine went from 90 to more than 200, which means I'm more than twice as good.
Given that I'm in the sixth out of seven leagues in WoL, I'd be in the twelfth league in HotS (five leagues above Grand Master), so I really should attend Code S.
On February 21 2013 07:14 kafkaesque wrote: Mine went from 90 to more than 200, which means I'm more than twice as good.
Given that I'm in the sixth out of seven leagues in WoL, I'd be in the twelfth league in HotS (five leagues above Grand Master), so I really should attend Code S.
Thanks Blizzard!
That makes a lot of sense. GomTV should offer you a seed for sure.
On February 21 2013 00:29 FLuE wrote: I don't really understand it. Press a button, record an action. Number of times that happens in a minute is actions per minute. Seems simple enough. Don't even get started on the Blizzard minute vs. actual minute either....
Yes, it's really hard to understand what justifies an abomination like Blizzard minutes. I really can't wrap my head around it.
Isn't that just because you don't play on normal speed but on faster?
It is, but it really can't be that hard. We play on Fastest with BW and yet the APM is still measured by an actual minute and not a 'Fastest' minute. Whatever that would be. It's supposed to be an easy actions/time. But using non-standard time makes the number rather meaningless. 30 actions in one minute or 300 actions in one minute makes sense. A minute that is faster than a minute doesn't make sense.
On February 21 2013 07:14 kafkaesque wrote: Mine went from 90 to more than 200, which means I'm more than twice as good.
Given that I'm in the sixth out of seven leagues in WoL, I'd be in the twelfth league in HotS (five leagues above Grand Master), so I really should attend Code S.
Thanks Blizzard!
That makes a lot of sense. GomTV should offer you a seed for sure.
Maybe we should just give him the golden mouse straight away? He is to a GM as a GM is to a silver player after all, so let's just skip the humiliation for the so called "pros" and just give him all the titles imaginable. Also all the sponsor money I guess.
On February 21 2013 07:14 kafkaesque wrote: Mine went from 90 to more than 200, which means I'm more than twice as good.
Given that I'm in the sixth out of seven leagues in WoL, I'd be in the twelfth league in HotS (five leagues above Grand Master), so I really should attend Code S.
Thanks Blizzard!
That makes a lot of sense. GomTV should offer you a seed for sure.
Maybe we should just give him the golden mouse straight away? He is to a GM as a GM is to a silver player after all, so let's just skip the humiliation for the so called "pros" and just give him all the titles imaginable. Also all the sponsor money I guess.
Fuck, let's bury him beneath a 20 foot statue in his likeness--why wait for him to die with great deeds, we know he'll do them anyway. Just grab him and shove him beneath his memorial like a true hero.
On February 21 2013 07:07 Buff345 wrote: I skimmed this thread and didnt see anyone posted this so I will. I dunno if it even matters, but I'm about a 250-270 apm player with terran. I basically only play terran lately and Im really only good with them.
But I played a match as Zerg the other day against another master terran, and I had 400 apm with zerg. I have no idea why really. My opponent was playing pretty quickly with like 320 apm, but I had easily an extra 150 apm just for playing zerg. I dunno what it is that is taken into account for zerg as opposed to terran but I figured id mention it. If youre playing zerg then your apm is probably going to be higher. As terran my apm is about the same as it was in wol.
Your APM is always higher with zerg.
Its always been like this with me.
80 - 90 apm with toss, 100 - 120 with terran and 130 - 150 with zerg. (old counter)
On February 21 2013 07:07 Buff345 wrote: I skimmed this thread and didnt see anyone posted this so I will. I dunno if it even matters, but I'm about a 250-270 apm player with terran. I basically only play terran lately and Im really only good with them.
But I played a match as Zerg the other day against another master terran, and I had 400 apm with zerg. I have no idea why really. My opponent was playing pretty quickly with like 320 apm, but I had easily an extra 150 apm just for playing zerg. I dunno what it is that is taken into account for zerg as opposed to terran but I figured id mention it. If youre playing zerg then your apm is probably going to be higher. As terran my apm is about the same as it was in wol.
Your APM is always higher with zerg.
Its always been like this with me.
80 - 90 apm with toss, 100 - 120 with terran and 130 - 150 with zerg. (old counter)
That isn't true at all lol. HerO is known to heavily out multi-task his opponents and he plays toss. Back on topic, they screw up APM more and more, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is knowing that you can increase it a certain increment rather than an actual value, there are outside programs that calculate that anyways so we should be fine.
On February 21 2013 07:07 Buff345 wrote: I skimmed this thread and didnt see anyone posted this so I will. I dunno if it even matters, but I'm about a 250-270 apm player with terran. I basically only play terran lately and Im really only good with them.
But I played a match as Zerg the other day against another master terran, and I had 400 apm with zerg. I have no idea why really. My opponent was playing pretty quickly with like 320 apm, but I had easily an extra 150 apm just for playing zerg. I dunno what it is that is taken into account for zerg as opposed to terran but I figured id mention it. If youre playing zerg then your apm is probably going to be higher. As terran my apm is about the same as it was in wol.
Your APM is always higher with zerg.
Its always been like this with me.
80 - 90 apm with toss, 100 - 120 with terran and 130 - 150 with zerg. (old counter)
That isn't true at all lol. HerO is known to heavily out multi-task his opponents and he plays toss. Back on topic, they screw up APM more and more, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is knowing that you can increase it a certain increment rather than an actual value, there are outside programs that calculate that anyways so we should be fine.
Does Hero play all races? If no than his example is irrelevant.
On February 21 2013 07:07 Buff345 wrote: I skimmed this thread and didnt see anyone posted this so I will. I dunno if it even matters, but I'm about a 250-270 apm player with terran. I basically only play terran lately and Im really only good with them.
But I played a match as Zerg the other day against another master terran, and I had 400 apm with zerg. I have no idea why really. My opponent was playing pretty quickly with like 320 apm, but I had easily an extra 150 apm just for playing zerg. I dunno what it is that is taken into account for zerg as opposed to terran but I figured id mention it. If youre playing zerg then your apm is probably going to be higher. As terran my apm is about the same as it was in wol.
Your APM is always higher with zerg.
Its always been like this with me.
80 - 90 apm with toss, 100 - 120 with terran and 130 - 150 with zerg. (old counter)
That isn't true at all lol. HerO is known to heavily out multi-task his opponents and he plays toss. Back on topic, they screw up APM more and more, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is knowing that you can increase it a certain increment rather than an actual value, there are outside programs that calculate that anyways so we should be fine.
Does Hero play all races? If no than his example is irrelevant.
On February 21 2013 07:07 Buff345 wrote: I skimmed this thread and didnt see anyone posted this so I will. I dunno if it even matters, but I'm about a 250-270 apm player with terran. I basically only play terran lately and Im really only good with them.
But I played a match as Zerg the other day against another master terran, and I had 400 apm with zerg. I have no idea why really. My opponent was playing pretty quickly with like 320 apm, but I had easily an extra 150 apm just for playing zerg. I dunno what it is that is taken into account for zerg as opposed to terran but I figured id mention it. If youre playing zerg then your apm is probably going to be higher. As terran my apm is about the same as it was in wol.
Your APM is always higher with zerg.
Its always been like this with me.
80 - 90 apm with toss, 100 - 120 with terran and 130 - 150 with zerg. (old counter)
That isn't true at all lol. HerO is known to heavily out multi-task his opponents and he plays toss. Back on topic, they screw up APM more and more, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is knowing that you can increase it a certain increment rather than an actual value, there are outside programs that calculate that anyways so we should be fine.
Does Hero play all races? If no than his example is irrelevant.
No, he took it to be a race insult.
The thing it is not a race insult. Im am by no means saying toss has to use less APM. Its just how the counter works. The reason why zerg APM is higher from what i can tell is all the repetitive actions you have to pull off such as creep spread and injecting inflate apm quite abit.
On February 21 2013 10:40 HolyExlxF wrote: Why the fuck can't APM actually mean "actions per minute."
yeah I fail to understand why this APM thingy could generate 300 threads. We all know that gamers spam apm in early game and tend to stabilize later on. Why bothering creating 25 ways to calculate instead of the number of key pressed and mouse clicked?
On February 21 2013 11:50 BigFan wrote: It's weird how a simple APM calculation can keep on changing every patch lol
Well time isn't measured by a clock, a clock measures another clock. For time, a clock is only a reference for another clock. So we don't know what Blizzard is measuring with their APM but they use a really weird clock
Pre patch I was around 150apm (Zerg) with about 100 epm, and now I do 315 apm and 185epm... Seriously, how hard is it to fix the damn apm meter Blizzard. You have the money and I am somewhat sure that you have some guy in the cellar capable of fixing this. This is a confidence boost I do not need, but I do not want to look at GSL and when Legend brings up the apm meter it is all over the place. Fix it plz!
If this is an actual change and not a bug, then it's such a useless and misleading change. They should just change it to a real life minute and never fiddle with it again.
I just watched a hots replay where GoOdy went up against Creator. At the end of that game the players had 172 apm (GoOdy) and 332 APM (Creator) which is not really far from their performances in WoL. I usually end up with something between 200 and 250 APM when playing the beta which, again, is not too far from my performance in WoL (Master in both WoL and HotS).
For me the replays seem to just work fine. The scoreboard at the end of the game however is seriously fucked up. Although it is correct a fair amount of the time there are some matches for which it reports any number between 0 and 9000 APM regardless of what the game or replay showed. The average APM is bugged aswell, it's something above 1000 for me.
But then again, I exclusively play the beta and haven't had the chance to take a look how it works for WoL so take anything I said with that in mind.
On February 21 2013 07:07 Buff345 wrote: I skimmed this thread and didnt see anyone posted this so I will. I dunno if it even matters, but I'm about a 250-270 apm player with terran. I basically only play terran lately and Im really only good with them.
But I played a match as Zerg the other day against another master terran, and I had 400 apm with zerg. I have no idea why really. My opponent was playing pretty quickly with like 320 apm, but I had easily an extra 150 apm just for playing zerg. I dunno what it is that is taken into account for zerg as opposed to terran but I figured id mention it. If youre playing zerg then your apm is probably going to be higher. As terran my apm is about the same as it was in wol.
I have higher APM count with Zerg than Terran (even when SC2Gears still worked, and Terran is my best race). I think it's just because of the macro mechanics of Zergs (larvae+cheaper units like Zerglings). Units can all be made in one go rather than with individual key presses or mouse clicks with Terran or Protoss respectively. I get about 450 with Zerg (in SC2 APM) in this patch too, and about 300 APM with the other races (in this new patch in SCII). It is weird though how your APM in this new patch is the same as the APM in the old patch according to SC2.
On February 21 2013 00:20 Technique wrote: It's just some fake apm to make everyone feel good.
Because spamming useless clicks is "real" apm.
It is. ACTIONS PER MINUTE.
Take every action you have executed in a game, divide by number of minutes in said game, APM. It is much easier, statistically, to use binary systems (action/no action) than endlessly qualifying those actions as "real."
On February 21 2013 00:24 mau5mat wrote: To avoid making a new thread, as the question is related, I'd like to ask how the APM was measured in BW? Was it the same as how SC2 is measured or is it different (I think BW is slightly slower paced in game-speed, how would this affect the numbers etc?)
APM in BW was measured by every action (minus screen locations) in a real-life minute. So every action, even the repetitive ones, were counted toward your APM. The in-game speed had no effect on the calculation. Your EAPM (effective actions per minute) would subtract the actions you tried to perform, but were limited due to resources. For example, spamming "P" to build a probe even though you only have 25 minerals.
Thanks very much, SC2 apm is slightly behind 'real-time' apm isn't it? Would it not just make sense to make everything real-time, as BW's apm counter was?
Keep in mind that Blizzard never authored any code to measure APM for BW.
I noticed my APM was too high as well. I played BW at 200 APM, and I play SC2 at a little over 100. After downloading the new patch, my SC2 APM doubled, and I can personally guarantee I'm not playing at my BW speed.
Amazing how Blizzard messed with APM again. FFS at least outline the APM calculation algorithm when you do this. Even with the old APM/EPM I have no clue which and how actions are counted. Hoping for an SC2Gears update soon.
On February 21 2013 12:25 Omnidroid wrote: If this is an actual change and not a bug, then it's such a useless and misleading change. They should just change it to a real life minute and never fiddle with it again.
Well, I think that's what they did. Not give free extra APM like some pretend ;D
Whatever number it is will be consistent if you don't improve, and it will increase if you do approve. If it's higher than the fast players (Taeja, Hero, Stephano, etc...) then you're possibly spamming too much--or you've found a better way to play the game.
But the actual number doesn't matter.
If you're averaging 300 now--then just use that as a baseline and know that if you start going 350-450 that you're improving in your hand speed (assuming you're performing the same tasks without change) if you're 100-200 APM higher than the fastest pros, then maybe you're overdoing something.
But the actual number is meaningless. It's a measure of progress, that's all.
On February 21 2013 00:24 mau5mat wrote: To avoid making a new thread, as the question is related, I'd like to ask how the APM was measured in BW? Was it the same as how SC2 is measured or is it different (I think BW is slightly slower paced in game-speed, how would this affect the numbers etc?)
APM in BW was measured by every action (minus screen locations) in a real-life minute. So every action, even the repetitive ones, were counted toward your APM. The in-game speed had no effect on the calculation. Your EAPM (effective actions per minute) would subtract the actions you tried to perform, but were limited due to resources. For example, spamming "P" to build a probe even though you only have 25 minerals.
Thanks very much, SC2 apm is slightly behind 'real-time' apm isn't it? Would it not just make sense to make everything real-time, as BW's apm counter was?
Keep in mind that Blizzard never authored any code to measure APM for BW.
Just have to add that the in-game speed in SC/BW did have effect on the calculation. If you played on any of the slower settings the APM would increase by quite alot. Also spamming "P" was counted under a thing called "null" so you could se if you did alot of extremely useless spamming or not. I prided myself on trying to get below 10 "null" every game. Unless I build reavers or carriers it worked.
Before patch I had around 110 apm for terran and 130 for zerg now I average 150 for T and 300 for Z.
My guess is that discarded commands are also counted : whenever you try to build drones by holding the key, after morphing all your larvas, the following commands are also counted in the apm.
That the only thing that I see that can make sense. Due to macro mechanics Z apm has always been the same, but very far from 2 times my T apm !
My BW APM (aka true APM) is in the low 200s but I can easily do 400+ on SCII now, despite not knowing half the hotkeys. According to Blizzard we're all a bunch of low-self-esteem 15 year-olds who will cry and quit the game if we're not tricked into thinking we're better than we really are. I'm pretty sure this is the same logic that they used when they decided to hide wins and give everyone useless division ranks.
On February 23 2013 00:55 iamho wrote: My BW APM (aka true APM) is in the low 200s but I can easily do 400+ on SCII now, despite not knowing half the hotkeys. According to Blizzard we're all a bunch of low-self-esteem 15 year-olds who will cry and quit the game if we're not tricked into thinking we're better than we really are. I'm pretty sure this is the same logic that they used when they decided to hide wins and give everyone useless division ranks.
Um... BW did not have APM counters in it. We as a community willed it into existence and Blizzard is simply keeping pace with what we in the community are already doing for ourselves.
Thats really funny this APM stuff.. I just played a 30 min game ZvT, and in the end of the game it showed 330 APM. Well, i'm not DRG, and my APM before the patch sits with Zerg at around 130... Apparently this takes into account all the times I hold 'd' for example to build a round of drones, each sticky stroke it counts as action...
There is probably a bug of some kind in some games. Tested a game against the AI to see what was up.
I tried: Moving just the camera with hotkeys (no apm) Moving the camera by scrolling to the edge (no apm) Moving the camera by minimap (no apm) Holding production key down without enough money (no apm) Sending repeated actions for a unit, such as right clicking multiple locations for an overlord (apm) Selecting units (apm)
Basically, every action that actually makes something happen is an action in APM. A minute of testing (ingame time) and it seemed to be pretty close to how many actions I had performed during the test.
I suspect there is just a bug in some games causing apm to inflate, but under normal circumstances it seems accurate.
Conclusion: APM is still counted in blizzard time, and camera movements do not contribute to APM
Okay here was my first test. I used the select command and attack command to kill my own base, and then continued to switch through selecting different units of my own to get a certain number of actions per game:
20 actions in a 1:49 game
Game time APM would be ~11
Adjusted real time APM ~15.4
Score screen apm was 12 (or ~22 actions in 1:49)
--------------------------
40 actions in a 1:38 game
Game time APM would be ~24.5
Adjusted real time APM ~34.3
Score screen apm was 27 (or ~44 actions in 1:38)
---------------------------
59 actions in a 1:37 game
Game time APM would be ~36.5
Adjusted real time APM ~51.1
Score screen APM was 35 (or ~56.6 actions in 1:37)
----------------------------
So it definitely does not seem as if the score screen average is using real time APM. Which makes plenty of sense considering the game timer still isn't in real time, and adjusting the speed of a game drastically changes your APM (since it always calculates based on fast speed, no matter what).
I think it is very safe to rule out the idea of this being real time APM
------------------
I also played a game where I spammed camera control including mouse scrolling on map, edges, and with my middle mouse button, as well as creating saved camera locations and recalling them. These had no contribution to the APM.
-------------------
What I have noticed over my games is that the longer the games go, the higher the average APM goes. When watching replays Current APM seems to look perfectly fine, but the way the average increases just does not make sense. My guess would be that there is something wrong with the average APM algorithm and that it has nothing to do with blizzard time, camera controls, or actions only being counted at the most intensive periods.
While I can't disprove the 3rd one very easily, it seems extremely unlikely and a very odd idea. But 1 and 2 are certainly wrong
If only we could just fix this and change the standard game time to fastest so the world would just make sense again...
Noticed especially the last thing you said. The longer the game the higher the APM becomes, also it is a bit weird that recalled camera locations don't count. Hopefully there will be a statement and possibly a fix from Blizzard.
On February 23 2013 07:03 Befree wrote: Conclusion: APM is still counted in blizzard time, and camera movements do not contribute to APM
Okay here was my first test. I used the select command and attack command to kill my own base, and then continued to switch through selecting different units of my own to get a certain number of actions per game:
20 actions in a 1:49 game
Game time APM would be ~11
Adjusted real time APM ~15.4
Score screen apm was 12 (or ~22 actions in 1:49)
--------------------------
40 actions in a 1:38 game
Game time APM would be ~24.5
Adjusted real time APM ~34.3
Score screen apm was 27 (or ~44 actions in 1:38)
---------------------------
59 actions in a 1:37 game
Game time APM would be ~36.5
Adjusted real time APM ~51.1
Score screen APM was 35 (or ~56.6 actions in 1:37)
----------------------------
So it definitely does not seem as if the score screen average is using real time APM. Which makes plenty of sense considering the game timer still isn't in real time, and adjusting the speed of a game drastically changes your APM (since it always calculates based on fast speed, no matter what).
I think it is very safe to rule out the idea of this being real time APM
------------------
I also played a game where I spammed camera control including mouse scrolling on map, edges, and with my middle mouse button, as well as creating saved camera locations and recalling them. These had no contribution to the APM.
-------------------
What I have noticed over my games is that the longer the games go, the higher the average APM goes. When watching replays Current APM seems to look perfectly fine, but the way the average increases just does not make sense. My guess would be that there is something wrong with the average APM algorithm and that it has nothing to do with blizzard time, camera controls, or actions only being counted at the most intensive periods.
While I can't disprove the 3rd one very easily, it seems extremely unlikely and a very odd idea. But 1 and 2 are certainly wrong
If only we could just fix this and change the standard game time to fastest so the world would just make sense again...
It might be possible that the calculations keeps track of it chunks which would reduce the amount of "downtime" that normally occurs in games.
For example, lets say in a 10 minute game you had 100 APM. Now, you don't actually have 100 actions in Minute 1, 100 actions in minute two, etc... This is an average.
In ten minutes you made 1000 actions and that averages to 100 APM. How its normally calculated is in current rate. Example--at minute X I did Y actions in Z time and so my APM is W. This means that lulls in the actions reduces your average.
In otherwords, even if you make 1000 actions in 10 minutes, if the lulls are too big during certain sections of the game you'll still have less than 100apm.
Unless APM is literally dividing the number of actions total in a game by the amount of time passed. Lulls would not care. If you make 1000 actions in the first two minutes then walked away from your keyboard (dying at the 10 minute mark) you'll still have 100apm. In the old system, the moment you stop moving for 3-5 seconds your APM begins to drop and 10-20 seconds later your APM goes all the way to zero. If you walk away for 8 minutes you'll be barely above 1-5 apm. But if Blizz calculates simply the total number of actions and divides it by total time played--then hell yeah your APM would spike.
There is definitely something wrong because I looked at game and saw that my "Average APM" was 100 and "current APM" floating around 80 for a while and suddenly then my "avg. APM" went up to 120, even though I my "current APM" was never higher then 100!! How can my current APM never go higher than 100 but my average is going up??
This is really annoying. After a fun match I like to watch the replay and check my apm to see if I'm getting faster, and I can't do that anymore. Didn't blizzard write something about this yet? Surely B.net must be filled with people asking this question?
On February 23 2013 00:55 iamho wrote: My BW APM (aka true APM) is in the low 200s but I can easily do 400+ on SCII now, despite not knowing half the hotkeys. According to Blizzard we're all a bunch of low-self-esteem 15 year-olds who will cry and quit the game if we're not tricked into thinking we're better than we really are. I'm pretty sure this is the same logic that they used when they decided to hide wins and give everyone useless division ranks.
I'm really confused by this logic. As long as APM remains consistent (which admittedly it hasn't recently) and measures actions the players take, then faster players will continue to have higher APM than slower players. If IQ was suddenly changed to be more detailed and accurate but increased the rating by a magnitude of 10x, and your IQ "improved" from 110 to 1100, it wouldn't be a self esteem boost if your friend with 125 IQ improved to 1250 at the same time.
That being said, they really need to just pick a measurement of APM and stick to it, changing it all the time is what makes it useless.
I played an FFA in WoL with some friends today, and my APM was shown to be about the same as in the HotS beta, 130-ish, and then some Desert Strike (which is really APM unintensive), and got around 55, which sounds a bit too high. Then we played some ranked 3v3s, and even though I was playing about the same speed as in the FFA, my APM ended up in the 55-70 range, which is about what I had in WoL before the update.
On February 23 2013 00:55 iamho wrote: My BW APM (aka true APM) is in the low 200s but I can easily do 400+ on SCII now, despite not knowing half the hotkeys. According to Blizzard we're all a bunch of low-self-esteem 15 year-olds who will cry and quit the game if we're not tricked into thinking we're better than we really are. I'm pretty sure this is the same logic that they used when they decided to hide wins and give everyone useless division ranks.
I'm really confused by this logic. As long as APM remains consistent (which admittedly it hasn't recently) and measures actions the players take, then faster players will continue to have higher APM than slower players. If IQ was suddenly changed to be more detailed and accurate but increased the rating by a magnitude of 10x, and your IQ "improved" from 110 to 1100, it wouldn't be a self esteem boost if your friend with 125 IQ improved to 1250 at the same time.
That being said, they really need to just pick a measurement of APM and stick to it, changing it all the time is what makes it useless.
I think real action over a real minute is pretty reasonable how about you? How hard can this truly be? It's not a made up, arbitrary number. Key strokes and mouse clicks/ time. Just like rpm is cycle over time. revolutions per minute. There's no reason to get tricky by including non-standard times and the like.
The most logical answer is that Blizz is doing a weighed average of your apm overwheighing situations where APM is important... So your spam at the beginning is worth a lot less than your in battle macro/micro. In my opinion it is also the best way to express APM as a measure of mechanical effeciency
On February 25 2013 06:11 TerranBanker wrote: The most logical answer is that Blizz is doing a weighed average of your apm overwheighing situations where APM is important... So your spam at the beginning is worth a lot less than your in battle macro/micro. In my opinion it is also the best way to express APM as a measure of mechanical effeciency
I've been offracing, and i faced a bronze with 400 apm earlier today. And he was bronze. Like 2 base battle cruiser bronze.
On February 23 2013 00:55 iamho wrote: My BW APM (aka true APM) is in the low 200s but I can easily do 400+ on SCII now, despite not knowing half the hotkeys. According to Blizzard we're all a bunch of low-self-esteem 15 year-olds who will cry and quit the game if we're not tricked into thinking we're better than we really are. I'm pretty sure this is the same logic that they used when they decided to hide wins and give everyone useless division ranks.
I'm really confused by this logic. As long as APM remains consistent (which admittedly it hasn't recently) and measures actions the players take, then faster players will continue to have higher APM than slower players. If IQ was suddenly changed to be more detailed and accurate but increased the rating by a magnitude of 10x, and your IQ "improved" from 110 to 1100, it wouldn't be a self esteem boost if your friend with 125 IQ improved to 1250 at the same time.
That being said, they really need to just pick a measurement of APM and stick to it, changing it all the time is what makes it useless.
I think real action over a real minute is pretty reasonable how about you? How hard can this truly be? It's not a made up, arbitrary number. Key strokes and mouse clicks/ time. Just like rpm is cycle over time. revolutions per minute. There's no reason to get tricky by including non-standard times and the like.
I agree completely. The only thing that I would change from how it was measured in BW would be to include camera hotkeys and minimap clicks (from my understanding these things weren't included in BW APM because the Replay file didn't hold the information?). It really shouldn't be complicated.
oh.. i thought i was just being very slow, it all seemed 100% legit to me. but then some games i would spam extra hard all game long to test out the theory, and the one displayed in the performance tab would drop down to low numbers, somehow some way.
then i would go into a custom game where i'm staring at my bunker and making units every 10 seconds. suddenly extremely high numbers, somehow some way, ROFL.
i would say, right click spam no longer weighs on the number as heavily (or at all) when it would before the big patch. i would also say it's more in line with e-apm, but something is really up with the numbers it displays sometimes. i think i'll stick to sc2gears if i were ever curious about just the APM measure
I missed the days of BW chart. Watching my progress in APM over time, slowly increasing, and then watching my most recent TvZ TvT and TvP and seeing that I actually improved. But actual in game APM I never used, though I did use that alert that told me when my APM was below X level.
It starts off right then.. does not drop as quickly as it should
ok i give up... test conditions: 50 or 100 commands in first or second minute of game
what i found out is: - increase in avrg apm (despite 0 actual apm for a long time) at timer count: 63 (1:03) ,127 (2:07),255 (4:15),511(8:31) maybe 1023 (17:03) looks like some kind of overflow error (if not purposely apm buff implemented by blizzard) - avrg apm update almost always (99%) on odd timer count during periods of 0 apm - I have no clue how blizz calculates avrg apm ^_^
It starts off right then.. does not drop as quickly as it should
ok i give up... test conditions: 50 or 100 commands in first or second minute of game
what i found out is: - increase in avrg apm (despite 0 actual apm for a long time) at timer count: 63 (1:03) ,127 (2:07),255 (4:15),511(8:31) maybe 1023 (17:03) looks like some kind of overflow error (if not purposely apm buff implemented by blizzard) - avrg apm update almost always (99%) on odd timer count during periods of 0 apm - I have no clue how blizz calculates avrg apm ^_^
omg well done! I was inspired by the same post and doing a similar research while getting basicly the same results. Most (if not all) of the APM inflation occurs at specific moments in time. The most prominent ones are at 4:15, 8:31 and 17:03. Usually at that time average APM is stable enough to see big swings and I also suspect the % value of APM inflation is higher (15-20%) then during earlier ones. Nice job switching to pure seconds count and spotting the binary sequence (64-1, 128-1, 256-1, 512-1, 1024-1) and as a result the 1:03 and 2:07 timings. I didn't see those. After that i tested 0:31 spot and I'm absolutely positive there is some APM inflation there too, though it is really minor and APM is really volatile at that point. Earlier moments like 0:15 and 0:07 are even harder to analyze.
Why in god's name can't Blizzard still figure out that what everyone wants is this (and it's incredibly easy to implement):
Game starts Set Actions Counter to 0 Set Seconds Counter to 0 Every left click, add 1 to Actions Counter (including clicking on the minimap or whatever, dragging to select units etc.) Every right click, add 1 to Action Counter (including spamming) Every press on a keyboard key related to the actual game of Sc2 (so not typing things in in-game chat, but definitely setting/recalling camera hotkeys, holding down d for a round of drones is 10 actions, using any of the hotkeys), add 1 to Actions Counter Every extra mouse button click, add 1 to Actions Counter (for people who use middle mouse buttons) Every second, add 1 to Seconds Counter
The formula is then APM = Actions Counter / (Seconds Counter / 60)
Done.
That's it.
Clicks / (Seconds / 60)
For fuck's sake.
NB: If Blizzard wants to fuck around with something a bit arbitrary every 10 seconds, then they can feel free to use EPM for that, couldn't care less. Also, screw Blizzard minutes the ingame timer and APM counter should both be changed to use real time.
On February 25 2013 19:03 NDDseer wrote: Why in god's name can't Blizzard still figure out that what everyone wants is this (and it's incredibly easy to implement):
Game starts Set Actions Counter to 0 Set Seconds Counter to 0 Every left click, add 1 to Actions Counter (including clicking on the minimap or whatever, dragging to select units etc.) Every right click, add 1 to Action Counter (including spamming) Every press on a keyboard key related to the actual game of Sc2 (so not typing things in in-game chat, but definitely setting/recalling camera hotkeys, holding down d for a round of drones is 10 actions, using any of the hotkeys), add 1 to Actions Counter Every extra mouse button click, add 1 to Actions Counter (for people who use middle mouse buttons) Every second, add 1 to Seconds Counter
The formula is then APM = Actions Counter / (Seconds Counter / 60)
Done.
That's it.
Clicks / (Seconds / 60)
For fuck's sake.
NB: If Blizzard wants to fuck around with something a bit arbitrary every 10 seconds, then they can feel free to use EPM for that, couldn't care less. Also, screw Blizzard minutes the ingame timer and APM counter should both be changed to use real time.
As you now can see from the posts before you and the updated OP, there is no reason for tinfoil-hat-ideas. It is just a bug. Yes, it is a embarrasing one, but still there is not reason for claiming Blizzard wants to ruin your game (some post even sound like Blizzard ruins peoples life by an APM bug...).
i THINK i figured it out. They seem to make things in steps of 12. The moving average should be the average of the last 12 seconds. Thats why you often have one of these current apm values shown in your drop to 0 if you idle:
12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 84, 96, 108, 120 etc
how they inflate your avrg apm: time from-till [sec]; blizz avrg 0?-62; 1+1/12 (till time 1:02 - inflation factor =1.083) 63-126; 1+1/6 (till time 2:06 - inflation factor = 1.167) 127-254;1+1/3 (till time 4:14 - inflation factor = 1.333) 255-510; 1+1/2 (till time 8:30 - inflation factor = 1.5) 511-1022; 1+1/1(till time 17:02 - inflation factor = 2) feel free to test further/correct me
edit: corrected wrong seconds to minute conversion ^_^
What's so hard with Amount of clicks/amount of minutes. (Or if you want, seconds and * 60)? Blizzard must really be mad. But i think it ĺl be fun to see pros getting 800 APM past the 20 minute mark :D
On February 26 2013 01:23 nomyx wrote: APM is so meaningless now. Blizzard, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Just give us amount of clicks / amount of minutes.
Given the history here, I think you need to specify what you mean by "clicks" and what you mean by "minutes" if you want Blizzard to write something fitting your definition.
On February 26 2013 01:02 grigorin wrote: i think i figured it out. They seem to make things in steps of 12. The moving average should be the average of the last 12 seconds. Thats why you often have one of these current apm values shown in your drop to 0 if you idle:
12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 84, 96, 108, 120 etc
how they inflate your avrg apm: time from-till [sec]; blizz avrg 0?-62; 1+1/12 (till time 1:02 - inflation factor =1.083) 63-126; 1+1/6 (till time 2:06 - inflation factor = 1.167) 127-254;1+1/3 (till time 4:14 - inflation factor = 1.333) 255-510; 1+1/2 (till time 8:30 - inflation factor = 1.5) 511-1022; 1+1/1(till time 17:02 - inflation factor = 2) feel free to test further/correct me
edit: corrected wrong seconds to minute conversion ^_^
According to your inflation factors at 8:30 additional inflation should be around 12,5%, at 17:03 around 33%, and at 34:07 even more than 33%(?).
I just went through a game and for both players the APM increase at 8:31 was 114->140 :22,81% 149->175 :17,45% at 17:03 mark 148->175 :18.24% 190->228 :20.00% and at 34:07 mark: 192->224 :16.66% 234->274 :17.09%
On February 26 2013 01:02 grigorin wrote: i think i figured it out. They seem to make things in steps of 12. The moving average should be the average of the last 12 seconds. Thats why you often have one of these current apm values shown in your drop to 0 if you idle:
12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 84, 96, 108, 120 etc
how they inflate your avrg apm: time from-till [sec]; blizz avrg 0?-62; 1+1/12 (till time 1:02 - inflation factor =1.083) 63-126; 1+1/6 (till time 2:06 - inflation factor = 1.167) 127-254;1+1/3 (till time 4:14 - inflation factor = 1.333) 255-510; 1+1/2 (till time 8:30 - inflation factor = 1.5) 511-1022; 1+1/1(till time 17:02 - inflation factor = 2) feel free to test further/correct me
edit: corrected wrong seconds to minute conversion ^_^
According to your inflation factors at 8:30 additional inflation should be around 12,5%, at 17:03 around 33%, and at 34:07 even more than 33%(?).
I just went through a game and for both players the APM increase at 8:31 was 114->140 :22,81% 149->175 :17,45% at 17:03 mark 148->175 :18.24% 190->228 :20.00% and at 34:07 mark: 192->224 :16.66% 234->274 :17.09%
ok further testing needed ^_^
what I found out so far (again i THINK) is, that depending on your apm your boost varies aswell. If you have low apm you get inflated more. (my previous test was made with 50 apm, i think the first threshold is 100 APM. That may explain why my tests with 100 apm had so much variation)
now trying to figure out where the threshold in apm are, but it seems blizzard has created a random number generator with this apm algorithm....maybe it has something to do with apm spikes...
On February 26 2013 09:10 grigorin wrote: now trying to figure out where the threshold in apm are, but it seems blizzard has created a random number generator with this apm algorithm....maybe it has something to do with apm spikes...
I just laughed out loud. Sure sounds like something blizzard will do...
So blizzard is trying to fool slower players that they have a high apm? Doesn't seem very helpful at all. At least in WoL you could multiply your apm by .38 to get the right number. Now it just seems like a jumbled mess. Every zerg player I face has at least 275+ apm.
I remember there was this patch that came after the inclusion of the 'EPM' thing where they said something like "We also put back APM for those who want to impress others" or something along those lines. I thought it was a passive-aggressive comment made by some salty sub-40 apm blizzard employee who probably doesn't even lift. Either way, it's kinda crazy how consistent they are at being inconsistent with simple things like TIME & APM. There must be more things we don't know of that are keeping them from getting time and apm right. =-/
Played 2v2ai with a friend of mine. We played about 10ish games against the ai.
in all 10 games our APM was consistent. Significantly higher than before, but consistent. So long as its consistent, we will be able to measure our progress. If it's higher than fast pro players, we might be too spammy. Anything else is player dependent.
Yeah it seems like a bit of a joke, mine has gone up from 130 in wol to anywhere between 170 and 450 on hots. It makes absolutely no sense to me, it's not consistent at all
It's definitely broken and fucked up. I have a hard time believing my opponent and I in low masters are both ranging 40 APM (Some random score screen outcomes) and then at other times it says we're both 300. My APM definitely isn't 300 as protoss, nor is it as low as 40.
I can only hope it's broken. I'm not one to put a whole lot of emphasis on APM, but it's kind of nice to see if I'm getting faster. It's not very useful like this.
God damnit Blizzard. Just leave the APM function the fuck alone and make it function like the way it did in BWcharts.
Edit: APM doesn't have the same significance as it did in BW cause Blizzard kept fucking around with it and even created an "EPM" which did absolutely nothing.
Blizzard has probably spent a few thousand dollars worth of programming time on changing APM alone... IMAGINE IF THEY JUST UFKCING MADE IT ACTIONS PER MINUTES.
On February 26 2013 10:55 Hitch-22 wrote: Blizzard has probably spent a few thousand dollars worth of programming time on changing APM alone... IMAGINE IF THEY JUST UFKCING MADE IT ACTIONS PER MINUTES.
Seriously.
It's a simple concept. Stop messing around with it OMG. How can they make something so simple so damn complicated?
Ok, have messed around with those damn apm a bit. I have been concentrating on current apm for now. It's seriously messed up what blizzard has programmed in these apm algorithms. apm come in (at least?) 16 types.
typ 1: countdown from 12 (12 three times) typ 2: countdown from 12 (12 twice) typ 3: countdown from 12 (12 once) typ 4: countdown from 11 typ 5: countdown from 10 typ 6: countdown from 9 typ 7: countdown from 8 typ 8: countdown from 7 typ 9: countdown from 6 typ 10: countdown from 5 typ 11: rise 5 5 4 4 12 typ 12: rise 5 4 4 12 12 typ 13: rise 4 4 12 12 12 typ 14: rise 4 12 12 12 12 typ 15: countdown from 12 (12 five times) (sometimes no countdown) typ 16: countdown from 12 (12 four times) (sometimes no countdown)
example 1: if you click one time on tick 41 (apm type 9+2*16) you always get "6" current apm. Likewise if you click on 2:55 (apm type 9 + 9*16) you get "6"
example 2: if you spam and then stop say at around 40 seconds. It does not matter if your last click was at tick 37 or 42. current APM will drop to 0 exactly during tick 47.
Hopefully this will get me (or someone else) further in the avrg apm causa.
P.S.: needless to say the first few seconds (split) dont obay the rules above (thx blizzard)
I find this hilariuos.... Blizzardtime=/=Realtime BlizzardAPM=/=APM
Cant we just make something that reads off memory and gives you actual APM as per realtime and we can show it on overlay ourselfs... (now im sorry for my ignorance but concidering the amount of hacks and trainers for diffrent games im guessin its doable)
On February 26 2013 15:51 Valhalla44 wrote: Idk really but i think now blizzard calculates apm per minute of real time not sc2 time.
I think they already tried that earlier and regardless, you can check that using SC2gears. It's the one that doesn't say EAPM and instead says *drumroll* APM. You'll need to make sure the real-time measurement checkbox in te Options is checked, or otherwise multiply the amount you see by 1.384. Then you should be able to recognise that the amount listed in-game by Blizzard is nonsense.
Have checked my january replays and it seems like the avrg apm was inaccurate back then aswell +-5% (sc2gears as reference). But no inflations at the critical timings we have seen post patch.
small update on my apm research. The timing of the clicks matter for the avrg apm.
My test conditions: -3 clicks -current apm 0 latest at tick 60 -measurement at tick 63 (first "correction") goal produce maximum and minimum avrg apm at 63
result: min: 0 avrg apm with e.g.: single click at 6 (first few seconds are special) single click at 27 (a "type 11" action) single click at 42 (a "type 10" action)
max: 6 avrg apm with: 3 fast clicks at start of game (my timing can surely be improved)
other notings: sometimes avrg apm gets corrected (at 1:03) sometimes upwards, sometimes downwards, depending on the timings I use- it's not a pure apm buff per se, just a (wrong) correction, which happens to be a buff most of the time.
On February 26 2013 10:55 Hitch-22 wrote: Blizzard has probably spent a few thousand dollars worth of programming time on changing APM alone... IMAGINE IF THEY JUST UFKCING MADE IT ACTIONS PER MINUTES.
Seriously.
It's a simple concept. Stop messing around with it OMG. How can they make something so simple so damn complicated?
Actions. Per. Minute.
Actions/Time
Deal with it. Holy crap.
I think from the information collected in this thread they don't want APM to be low for bad players because that will make them feel bad.
On February 26 2013 10:55 Hitch-22 wrote: Blizzard has probably spent a few thousand dollars worth of programming time on changing APM alone... IMAGINE IF THEY JUST UFKCING MADE IT ACTIONS PER MINUTES.
Seriously.
It's a simple concept. Stop messing around with it OMG. How can they make something so simple so damn complicated?
Actions. Per. Minute.
Actions/Time
Deal with it. Holy crap.
I think from the information collected in this thread they don't want APM to be low for bad players because that will make them feel bad.
No. From the information in this thread you should conclude the whole thing is bugged like hell.
On February 26 2013 10:55 Hitch-22 wrote: Blizzard has probably spent a few thousand dollars worth of programming time on changing APM alone... IMAGINE IF THEY JUST UFKCING MADE IT ACTIONS PER MINUTES.
Seriously.
It's a simple concept. Stop messing around with it OMG. How can they make something so simple so damn complicated?
Actions. Per. Minute.
Actions/Time
Deal with it. Holy crap.
I think from the information collected in this thread they don't want APM to be low for bad players because that will make them feel bad.
No. From the information in this thread you should conclude the whole thing is bugged like hell.
It eventually gets to the point of things being so messed up you just have to assume it's intentional
On February 26 2013 10:55 Hitch-22 wrote: Blizzard has probably spent a few thousand dollars worth of programming time on changing APM alone... IMAGINE IF THEY JUST UFKCING MADE IT ACTIONS PER MINUTES.
Seriously.
It's a simple concept. Stop messing around with it OMG. How can they make something so simple so damn complicated?
Actions. Per. Minute.
Actions/Time
Deal with it. Holy crap.
I think from the information collected in this thread they don't want APM to be low for bad players because that will make them feel bad.
No. From the information in this thread you should conclude the whole thing is bugged like hell.
It eventually gets to the point of things being so messed up you just have to assume it's intentional
It seems like there's a guy at blizzard whose only job is to figure out how to not offend their players. Probably the same guy that thought of the new experience points and bonus pool system.
On February 26 2013 10:55 Hitch-22 wrote: Blizzard has probably spent a few thousand dollars worth of programming time on changing APM alone... IMAGINE IF THEY JUST UFKCING MADE IT ACTIONS PER MINUTES.
Seriously.
It's a simple concept. Stop messing around with it OMG. How can they make something so simple so damn complicated?
Actions. Per. Minute.
Actions/Time
Deal with it. Holy crap.
I think from the information collected in this thread they don't want APM to be low for bad players because that will make them feel bad.
No. From the information in this thread you should conclude the whole thing is bugged like hell.
It eventually gets to the point of things being so messed up you just have to assume it's intentional
It seems like there's a guy at blizzard whose only job is to figure out how to not offend their players. Probably the same guy that thought of the new experience points and bonus pool system.
That's called Product Engagement I think. All companies have that. It's the same responsibility as the guy who updates the streams on the right hand side of TL's streams. The goal of the position is to maintain customer retention.
i just played a game where my apm was exact the same as my eapm. My opponent had a little percentage drop. Defenetliy there was something going wrong. But i'm still proud lol!
So is it safe to say that, at this point, noone knows what in-game APM measures, it's inconsistent, inflated and meaningless, and that one should ignore it and continue using SC2Gears APM instead?
I don't see how they could screw up such a simple measurement so badly on more than one occasion if it weren't deliberate. They want players to see a ridiculously high APM and feel good about it. It's like when they hid the losses for <Masters players. Just need to use SC2Gears.
As terran I struggled to push past 110-120 APM, probably averaged between 80-100 most games.
I've had over 300 average APM in beta so far (normally around 180-220) so something is amiss, my WoL apm is from when I actually played a lot, I would've expected a drop, or maybe a small increase due to using real time, not this madness.
Just use sc2gears like everybody who actually wanted stats for the last 2 years.
Blizzard somehow sets everything that they touch on fire - they show Average unspent resources in the score screen and treat it as if it will be the same every game - showing you what it was for your last game, your average for the entire season, etc, completely ignoring the fact that average unspent in sc2 (studied in macro like a pro thread) increases logarithmically with income. They also removed the average income, showing ONLY the incomplete data of average unspent, so you cant actually calculate SQ or anything close to it.
APM breaking is nothing in comparison, at least you can just parse the replay and read it from there - the other data is just gone, a victim of blizzards removing data to make people feel better. And nobody will ever notice.
Im reading over 300apm ingame every game while sc2gears shows in real time ~150-180apm, 100-120eapm, + about 20-40xapm
On February 27 2013 19:33 Cyro wrote: They also removed the average income, showing ONLY the incomplete data of average unspent, so you cant actually calculate SQ or anything close to it.
Average income isn't entirely gone. GGTracker can read it for you from the Resource Collection Rate graph. And calculate your SQ for you as well.
I think it's kinda weird how in the score screen in WoL, I get a star if I make LESS workers than my average worker production. Is blizz trying to teach bronzies to not make drones?
On February 28 2013 20:26 Henk wrote: I think it's kinda weird how in the score screen in WoL, I get a star if I make LESS workers than my average worker production. Is blizz trying to teach bronzies to not make drones?
If you make workers all the time in a 6 minute game you will obviously have less than skipping every second worker in a 15 minute game. It measures your worker building consistency very reliable.
Please use your brain before you just start going on the bash blizzard bandwagon.
On February 28 2013 20:26 Henk wrote: I think it's kinda weird how in the score screen in WoL, I get a star if I make LESS workers than my average worker production. Is blizz trying to teach bronzies to not make drones?
yeah I was wondering about that too. Another thing is minerals saturation. They show X/24 as if 24 was the perfect saturation for 8 mineral patches. Nobody at platinum or higher does it unless they are accumulating workers for an expo transfer. They are just misinforming the noobs.
On February 28 2013 20:26 Henk wrote: I think it's kinda weird how in the score screen in WoL, I get a star if I make LESS workers than my average worker production. Is blizz trying to teach bronzies to not make drones?
yeah I was wondering about that too. Another thing is minerals saturation. They show X/24 as if 24 was the perfect saturation for 8 mineral patches. Nobody at platinum or higher does it unless they are accumulating workers for an expo transfer. They are just misinforming the noobs.
They don't say x/24 is perfect saturation, they say it's maximum saturation.
Once you exceed 24 workers on a single base's mineral patches, you no longer gain additional income. 16 workers is the optimal amount because when you exceed it, the amount of money you gain drops.
For example, let's assume you have 10 workers. If you add one more, your income might increase by 12 minerals/minute. If you add another, it will increase by another 12 minerals/minute. However, if you add a 17th worker, your income would only increase by 7 minerals/minute. Finally, if you add a 25th worker, your income doesn't increase at all.
For players at lower leagues, having x/24 is perfectly fine because there are more important things for them to be focusing on than making sure they have 16 workers on minerals at every base.
APM is very broken now right? It seems to show both too high sometimes and too low other times. My range I have seen is 70-250 in different games. It doesnt seem very likely with such a big difference from game to game.
On March 21 2013 01:02 dpurple wrote: APM is very broken now right? It seems to show both too high sometimes and too low other times. My range I have seen is 70-250 in different games. It doesnt seem very likely with such a big difference from game to game.
^^ Exactly that. I am super confused. It varies from 40-300 for me. Often when I am actually focused and playing a good game I get the lowest values. Is it a deliberate bug?
FWIW, there's a lot of bugs in the game. I've had the loading screen tell me that the person I was playing against was a lvl 21 Gold league player, only to show after the game that they were still in placement matches and didn't have any levels at all. I've had match history show a game was 4v4 when it was 1v1, etc.
I used to average like 250ish apm (realtime) before. Since hots I average like 480 apm (realtime) or something ridiculous, so yeah this is obviously pretty broken.
I'm not sure if this has been said before, I only read half the replies, but the apm counter seems to act differently in 1v1 compared to teamgames. In 1v1 it shows that I'm always 250+ apm, but when I play 3v3 and I do exactly the same thing it only shows like 70 apm. (In reality I have approx 110-120 apm.)
We all know they have broken it again...or deliberate designed it in a way so that scrubs don't feel bad. I believe that the apm is now not only calculated on ur own performance but your opponents performance as well.Which is just f-ing funny as hell xD.
Blizzard is hurting my pride!! i liked my old apms;C i miss it so much.
Edit: To previous poster... That makes my theory the more viable... It takes all the players apms into account... maybe a collective game timer or something like that... this is hilarious xDDDD
I'm not sure if this has been said before, I only read half the replies, but the apm counter seems to act differently in 1v1 compared to teamgames. In 1v1 it shows that I'm always 250+ apm, but when I play 3v3 and I do exactly the same thing it only shows like 70 apm. (In reality I have approx 110-120 apm.)
On February 27 2013 19:33 Cyro wrote: They also removed the average income, showing ONLY the incomplete data of average unspent, so you cant actually calculate SQ or anything close to it.
Average income isn't entirely gone. GGTracker can read it for you from the Resource Collection Rate graph. And calculate your SQ for you as well.
Ya and the problem is that you need an outside program to do it, rather than just have it done in game. It's stupid and it literally took more effort to remove it than just leave the stat in the game. Same with apm, they make everything more complicated than necessary, which makes zero sense.
how about instead of artificially increasing players' apms, we instead begin to count certain actions? For example, if you watch pros play, the vast vast vast vast majority of them use many screen control keys. the APM tab in sc2 does not record the location hotkeys being used and rebound as apm, and if it were counted it would likely inflate everyone's average apm that uses this. I remember a friend and i discussing this, and there were some other things we found out weren't being counted (but i forgot by now )
When I play with my friends, we noticed that on the score screen its not even consistent between us. So on my score screen it might say I had 100 APM and on my friend's score screen it says I had 150.
From what I can tell, the current APM is trying to show optimization of potential eAPM...or something like that. So hitting all your production cycles and doing stuff with your army is equivalent whether you're on 1-base and all-inning or on 5-bases and dancing death balls with your opponent.
Hence why sitting on a single Nexus and spamming the Probe button gives 40 APM...relative to the potential actions you can do, you're doing fairly well...save for not scouting and building buildings.
I understand the concept in theory...Average APM is usually made meaningless when the first 5-10 minutes involve so few actions compared to minute 10-20.
That said, the actual implementation is really, really bad. And the label is misleading.
EDIT: Also, I wonder if the actual "minute" is determined by processor speed or FPS, rather than actual clock time (real or Blizzard).
all i can say is im freaking sick of them screwing around with such a stupidly basic stats that has been around since bw! is it accurate now or is it not which is it.
On March 22 2013 14:17 SlayerS_BoxxY wrote: When I play with my friends, we noticed that on the score screen its not even consistent between us. So on my score screen it might say I had 100 APM and on my friend's score screen it says I had 150.
Are you playing team games (2v2/3v3/4v4) when you see this? Because there is definitely a bug that causes your APM to plummet when people leave the game.
It's strange. I used to get around 200-300APM (I spam) and 90-120EAPM. During HotS beta, I used to see widely fluctuating APM averaging around 300, and since release I see ~110, which makes me think that it's now showing my EAPM. However, it makes my head tilt when I see some player in gold or silver hitting 200+ average APM in the same games.
Blizzard should really adress this as an issue. Many players took the apm number seriously to check if you were playing faster progresively with the practice.
It's disappointing that they cannot just fix the goddamned reading to mean...actions...per....minute. The readings in game and out of game don't even match. And some actions inflate apm while other actions (camera hotkeys) don't register at all.
Didn't Blizzard mention that they were going to fix this issue?
Perhaps they are doing it on purpose. It reminds me of a joke:
A man goes to the rabbi and complains, "Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can I do?"
The rabbi answers, "Take your goat into the room with you." The man in incredulous, but the rabbi insists. "Do as I say and come back in a week."
A week later the man comes back looking more distraught than before. "We cannot stand it," he tells the rabbi. "The goat is filthy." The rabbi then tells him, "Then go get yourself a dog and come back in a week." The man is shocked but does as the Rabbi says.
Another week later the man comes back looking terrible. "It's horrible. It's 9 of us in a room, the goat has made everything filthy and the dog barks all day." The rabbi says: "There's only one thing to do. Get yourself a pig! Then come back in a week." The man cannot believe his ears but once again does what the rabbi tells him.
A week goes past and the man slouches into the rabbi's quarters. "I cannot stand it. It's 9 of us in a room, the goat is a dirty animal, the dog barks even more and the pig sleeps on the couch." The rabbi looks at the man, ponders for a bit and then answers, "Go home and let the goat, the dog and the pig out. And come back in a week."
A radiant man returns to the rabbi a week later, exclaiming, "Life is beautiful. We enjoy every minute of it now that there's no goat, no barking and no pig -- only the nine of us."
I'd say we'll also take whichever half-decent measure of APM by the time Blizz is done with us...
On March 23 2013 18:29 Ghanburighan wrote: Perhaps they are doing it on purpose. It reminds me of a joke:
A man goes to the rabbi and complains, "Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can I do?"
The rabbi answers, "Take your goat into the room with you." The man in incredulous, but the rabbi insists. "Do as I say and come back in a week."
A week later the man comes back looking more distraught than before. "We cannot stand it," he tells the rabbi. "The goat is filthy." The rabbi then tells him, "Then go get yourself a dog and come back in a week." The man is shocked but does as the Rabbi says.
Another week later the man comes back looking terrible. "It's horrible. It's 9 of us in a room, the goat has made everything filthy and the dog barks all day." The rabbi says: "There's only one thing to do. Get yourself a pig! Then come back in a week." The man cannot believe his ears but once again does what the rabbi tells him.
A week goes past and the man slouches into the rabbi's quarters. "I cannot stand it. It's 9 of us in a room, the goat is a dirty animal, the dog barks even more and the pig sleeps on the couch." The rabbi looks at the man, ponders for a bit and then answers, "Go home and let the goat, the dog and the pig out. And come back in a week."
A radiant man returns to the rabbi a week later, exclaiming, "Life is beautiful. We enjoy every minute of it now that there's no goat, no barking and no pig -- only the nine of us."
I'd say we'll also take whichever half-decent measure of APM by the time Blizz is done with us...
HAHAHA! ive heard this one before but it has been a long time since ive heard it again.
This joke applies to the whole game... They know the basic problems with it already and they are taking there sweet as time to deliver so they can control our exceptions of the game. For example patching things now that should of been worked on ages ago like the hydra (which is still broken and everyone knows it).
Whatever they update is just a big relief to us because it is so painful to live with the current state of the game that anything they do is 'awesome'.
On March 23 2013 18:29 Ghanburighan wrote: Perhaps they are doing it on purpose. It reminds me of a joke:
A man goes to the rabbi and complains, "Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can I do?"
The rabbi answers, "Take your goat into the room with you." The man in incredulous, but the rabbi insists. "Do as I say and come back in a week."
A week later the man comes back looking more distraught than before. "We cannot stand it," he tells the rabbi. "The goat is filthy." The rabbi then tells him, "Then go get yourself a dog and come back in a week." The man is shocked but does as the Rabbi says.
Another week later the man comes back looking terrible. "It's horrible. It's 9 of us in a room, the goat has made everything filthy and the dog barks all day." The rabbi says: "There's only one thing to do. Get yourself a pig! Then come back in a week." The man cannot believe his ears but once again does what the rabbi tells him.
A week goes past and the man slouches into the rabbi's quarters. "I cannot stand it. It's 9 of us in a room, the goat is a dirty animal, the dog barks even more and the pig sleeps on the couch." The rabbi looks at the man, ponders for a bit and then answers, "Go home and let the goat, the dog and the pig out. And come back in a week."
A radiant man returns to the rabbi a week later, exclaiming, "Life is beautiful. We enjoy every minute of it now that there's no goat, no barking and no pig -- only the nine of us."
I'd say we'll also take whichever half-decent measure of APM by the time Blizz is done with us...
HAHAHA! ive heard this one before but it has been a long time since ive heard it again.
This joke applies to the whole game... They know the basic problems with it already and they are taking there sweet as time to deliver so they can control our exceptions of the game. For example patching things now that should of been worked on ages ago like the hydra (which is still broken and everyone knows it).
Whatever they update is just a big relief to us because it is so painful to live with the current state of the game that anything they do is 'awesome'.
I see what you're saying and to some extent agree, but you're being quite hyperbolic. If it's "so painful to live with the current state of the game" then why are you playing and/or watching SC2? If you're miserable with how the game is now, maybe it's just time to find a new game.
If you reaally cared about what your apm was exactly then you'd use something like sc2 gears, so I don't see why this is an issue as you can still use it to see if your playing faster or slower than you usually would
Their old apm system understated your apm by like 40%, blizzard wont fix this because its smart on their part to have peoples apm overstated. I imagine this was intentional by them.
On March 24 2013 04:29 Msr wrote: Their old apm system understated your apm by like 40%, blizzard wont fix this because its smart on their part to have peoples apm overstated. I imagine this was intentional by them.
Exactly, it feels so much better having 200+ apm than 20.
I know I'm not a slow player by any means, but being able to hit 400 to 500 apm by simply macroing and microing at the same time without actually feeling like I'm about to break my fingers nor actually playing my heart out is kind of a hint that the apm you get to see isn't quite correct.
There are two big mysteries in the world. How can someone fail at counting actions. The other one is why subtitles for movies randomly start to go faster or slower than a movie. :D
I find it hilarious that they got coders over there who can build World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo and yet none of them can figure out how to measure real APM. lol
On March 24 2013 08:44 Nausea wrote: I find it hilarious that they got coders over there who can build World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo and yet none of them can figure out how to measure real APM. lol
On March 23 2013 18:29 Ghanburighan wrote: Perhaps they are doing it on purpose. It reminds me of a joke:
A man goes to the rabbi and complains, "Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can I do?"
The rabbi answers, "Take your goat into the room with you." The man in incredulous, but the rabbi insists. "Do as I say and come back in a week."
A week later the man comes back looking more distraught than before. "We cannot stand it," he tells the rabbi. "The goat is filthy." The rabbi then tells him, "Then go get yourself a dog and come back in a week." The man is shocked but does as the Rabbi says.
Another week later the man comes back looking terrible. "It's horrible. It's 9 of us in a room, the goat has made everything filthy and the dog barks all day." The rabbi says: "There's only one thing to do. Get yourself a pig! Then come back in a week." The man cannot believe his ears but once again does what the rabbi tells him.
A week goes past and the man slouches into the rabbi's quarters. "I cannot stand it. It's 9 of us in a room, the goat is a dirty animal, the dog barks even more and the pig sleeps on the couch." The rabbi looks at the man, ponders for a bit and then answers, "Go home and let the goat, the dog and the pig out. And come back in a week."
A radiant man returns to the rabbi a week later, exclaiming, "Life is beautiful. We enjoy every minute of it now that there's no goat, no barking and no pig -- only the nine of us."
I'd say we'll also take whichever half-decent measure of APM by the time Blizz is done with us...
HAHAHA! ive heard this one before but it has been a long time since ive heard it again.
This joke applies to the whole game... They know the basic problems with it already and they are taking there sweet as time to deliver so they can control our exceptions of the game. For example patching things now that should of been worked on ages ago like the hydra (which is still broken and everyone knows it).
Whatever they update is just a big relief to us because it is so painful to live with the current state of the game that anything they do is 'awesome'.
I see what you're saying and to some extent agree, but you're being quite hyperbolic. If it's "so painful to live with the current state of the game" then why are you playing and/or watching SC2? If you're miserable with how the game is now, maybe it's just time to find a new game.
It is pretty simple, why do you go on living in a country if you dont agree with a lot of things. Why do you eat the food you eat even if your sick of it and why do you use the tools you use when you could use better tools. A majority of people are limited by there income, choice and in our case lack of quality games in the market.
It goes back to the joke why does he go on living in the house when it is so shit. well... he hasnt got many options does he.
If it wasnt for the very good match making system sc2 would be in trouble.
I confirm that I've been seeing weird APM issues. Currently, my average APM for the season is like 50. However, many of my games I've been getting over 200. Back when the APM was working, I would float around 80-120 average per game.
On March 24 2013 16:35 DemigodcelpH wrote: Are we ever going to get normal APM? This weird APM that gives gold players 200 is taking a lot out of the game.
It's just a number. Can't see how it's taking a lot out of the game... They will probably fix it in the next patch, since it seems like a really easy calculation (number of actions the last 5 seconds * 12, for example). This is just a glitch, but since it doesn't really affect gameplay at all, I don't think Blizzard is in any hurry to fix it.
First it's far lower than it really is, then the APM/EPM split, then this.
It's a small thing, but easily, easily doable. Incidentally, does anyone know where the dropsc APM gets its values from? I know that it definitely seems more accurate compared to my actual handspeed.
On March 24 2013 16:35 DemigodcelpH wrote: Are we ever going to get normal APM? This weird APM that gives gold players 200 is taking a lot out of the game.
It's just a number. Can't see how it's taking a lot out of the game... They will probably fix it in the next patch, since it seems like a really easy calculation (number of actions the last 5 seconds * 12, for example). This is just a glitch, but since it doesn't really affect gameplay at all, I don't think Blizzard is in any hurry to fix it.
Hmm, I don't think you know how programming and game engines work. APM isn't equivalent to a simple formula when you implement it. Obviously it's not a difficult feature to add, but it's never as simple as it sounds either. And the bug isn't as simple as "they added 100 extra APM or they used an even more exotic Blizzard time". It's probably memory management related or something.
On March 24 2013 16:35 DemigodcelpH wrote: Are we ever going to get normal APM? This weird APM that gives gold players 200 is taking a lot out of the game.
It's just a number. Can't see how it's taking a lot out of the game... They will probably fix it in the next patch, since it seems like a really easy calculation (number of actions the last 5 seconds * 12, for example). This is just a glitch, but since it doesn't really affect gameplay at all, I don't think Blizzard is in any hurry to fix it.
Hmm, I don't think you know how programming and game engines work. APM isn't equivalent to a simple formula when you implement it. Obviously it's not a difficult feature to add, but it's never as simple as it sounds either. And the bug isn't as simple as "they added 100 extra APM or they used an even more exotic Blizzard time". It's probably memory management related or something.
Believe me, APM calculation is simple. Especially for those who have every data required to calculate it (and no countless days required to reverse engineer seemingly random stream of bits..).
There is no way to glorify this. Blizzard fucked up (and they did it hard) with their attempt to show players' APM for the last 3 years. Even in showing the simplest normal APM (which is not even subjective like EAPM).
It might seem like they care because they try to "improve" their calculation (the calculation which is dividing 2 numbers) by changing it in every major patch.
But let's not deceive anyone. They've never ever made it right. If they'd care, the fix could go live tomorrow in a hot-fix patch.
(Fortunatelly showing APM is not what we like Blizzard for.)
I wish they'd just remove the value from the game. APM has almost no reliable relation to skill and just seems a superfluous fan service to leave it in.
On March 28 2013 21:17 Nekovivie wrote: I wish they'd just remove the value from the game. APM has almost no reliable relation to skill and just seems a superfluous fan service to leave it in.
What makes you say that? I know for myself my APM goes down when I am tired an play poorly and goes up when I am alert and play well. So I find it very reliable. I also think that awareness and APM are very closely related. Often when I play a player who isn't over sharp in his reactions he will have low APM.
Even if it isn't a great measure of skill, I still fail to see how it is superfluous fan service as you are never actually forced to use or consider APM.
On March 28 2013 21:17 Nekovivie wrote: I wish they'd just remove the value from the game. APM has almost no reliable relation to skill and just seems a superfluous fan service to leave it in.
Wins and losses don't have a reliable relation to skill either in a system that adjusts your match making to try and maintain a 50% win rate over time. How upset did people get when Blizz took that away?
My apm almost seems race dependent. When I'm zerg it says I'm anywhere between 150-400 apm, terran is 100-150, and protoss almost never shows over 100, and quite often shows sub 60. My average apm pre-performance tab was about 140ish, and I'm a random player so it's not like I'm just really bad at toss, quite the opposite of the apm orders. I've also had a couple of games with my roommate where we each show different apms for each player.
Protoss is less action-dependent than the other races, it's not just you that feels/has noticed this. It's more the inflation going from WoL to HoTS that is weird.
I mean I went from like 180-220, to 350-400 though, which is insane.
I'm glad there's a thread about this because I HATE the new APM. I stopped playing WoL about 6 months before HotS release and was usually around 80 average APM by end of game, now I'm at 320...yeah...ok...what's even the point of showing it now?
This is really quite a pain... I was averaging about 150 at the end of WoL. I played a ton of HotS beta and right when it came out and feel like I've really improved, and I also feel a lot faster. I'd LOVE to be able to compare my APM, as it was going up steadily, but now it just shows around 400 - 450 every single game, which is completely useless to me. Interestingly in team games, even if I try to play as fast as I can with the same race, it's only about 150-200....... the new APM is beyond pointless.
On April 01 2013 08:14 Zenon wrote: I wish they would stop messing with this. Would be great to see an accurate statistic in-game.
For now I'm using sc2gears.
Yeah, I really don't know what's so hard to get about a system that should just measure how many clicks and key presses people do Oo I mean it was artificial when the concept was originally designed and measured in the most basic way, that stuff now is like giving people their car's speed in "hills climbed per minute depending on weight".
So with the recent patch once again revising how SC2 calculates APM, do we have any additional data regarding the "new" APM measurement's accuracy? Has it been completely fixed?
So going through the recent pages i don't see it brought up. So like on the SC2 tab, i constantly get APM in the 150-250 recorded, but on GGTracker My average APM is around 60, you can see it here: My GGT page. Do we know how he calculates APM for his site? Does it just use the whole match and just average it out, is it real actions or camera actions?
Since people on the bnet forums are complaining that they "lost" APM in the recent patch, they might have finally fixed it. I would like to know, if they still calculate it with the "faster" in-game time though.
On March 30 2013 10:54 Valiver wrote: My apm almost seems race dependent. When I'm zerg it says I'm anywhere between 150-400 apm, terran is 100-150, and protoss almost never shows over 100, and quite often shows sub 60. My average apm pre-performance tab was about 140ish, and I'm a random player so it's not like I'm just really bad at toss, quite the opposite of the apm orders. I've also had a couple of games with my roommate where we each show different apms for each player.
I experience the same thing. When I play Zerg my APM is easily twice when I play the other races. Zerg is pretty much my worst race right now too so it makes very little sense.
On May 08 2013 23:59 AwM wrote: So going through the recent pages i don't see it brought up. So like on the SC2 tab, i constantly get APM in the 150-250 recorded, but on GGTracker My average APM is around 60, you can see it here: My GGT page. Do we know how he calculates APM for his site? Does it just use the whole match and just average it out, is it real actions or camera actions?
Hi, camera actions are excluded but everything else is included.