> According to this video, you need to be over 300 APM to be competitive.
> That means in 60 seconds, you need to accomplish over 300 things.
These are totally different. Although a pro SC player accomplishes a lot more than a beginner, I'm pretty sure there's no one out there that's actually doing 300 different things a minute - they are just pressing buttons 300 times. Most of it is switching between hotkeys to check if units are complete, ordering units to slightly different positions, etc. There's a lot of spamming going on too (like mashing the first hotkey for no good reason) to keep the APM rate high.
New players often spam just to get faster, but then as they get better a larger and larger percentage of those actions are useful.
The spam is only unnecessary at the very early game, when it's more just to warm up.
And of course they aren't doing 300 different tasks per minute. Doing a task takes more than one action. e.g. if you select a unit, then order to it attack a point, that was 3 actions. (click unit, hit a, click point). But they do quite a lot of different tasks per minute. jaedong had a game, with kal i think, in something like a semi finals, not too long ago, where there were 4 fights going on at the same time. and despite the fights, they still have to macro (which involves a variety of tasks: making new buildings, making new units, assigning workers to resources, gathering and hotkeying units).
Edit: Just remembered seeing Flash drinking several times during the first minute of the game in big tournaments. It's not like he cares what his apm is.
Nope. I think the article understates this but there is a difference between APM and EAPM. eAPM (Effective APM) is probably what he was getting at.
Semi-pros can have APMs of 200-700, with 70% of their actions being actions like spamming multiple right clicks. So their EAPM may be from 60-210 only, most in the bottom range.
Real pros have 60% or more of their clicks as unit/selection group selection, etc so they're a lot more useful.
In battles, some pros even peak up to 500-600 APM. So that may be an EAPM of 300-360 or more.
There's a vast level of skill difference between the top pros and semi-pros.
There's an American warcraft3 player who does around 120apm(as I recall) called Axslav and he was quite good, not a top pro but good enough to beat other pros with good strategy.
On the side note you can actually see how pros are micro-ing by spamming ctrl-c (at a good apm) when watching replays, it centralises the screen on what the player is currently selecting and can be fascinating to watch.
Most of that spam is useful. For instance, assigning units to resource nodes to ensure level resource depletion (something that now happens by default in SC II).
I keep hearing this, but I have trouble believing it. That's not to say the players don't believe it, but how much "warmer" could your fingers really need to be to manage hotkeys and control groups?
It looks like button spamming to me. Every time they are doing something of consequence (engaging in combat, retreating, etc.) there are large (at 300 APM rate) pauses in the key spamming.
I've also seen these 300 APM players drag a selection box over their units 5-10 times without assigning them an action or control group, then right-click a destination point another 5-10 times. They're spamming APM.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miGIJFsPi5U He says specifically he's not spamming, but warming up. It looks like spam to me, since he's hitting the hotkey to select larvae in between actually assigning them.
Edit: I suppose my issue with APM is as a unit of performance or "efficiency" (from the Ars article). It's not either of those; it's how fast you can hit a button, and independent of your win-loss record.
That's how I felt at first, but in 10+ years playing SC I've found the opposite. High APM is important for two reasons:
a) Scouting constantly, producing units, upgrades, building buildings, attacking, harassing, retreating, maneuvering. With multiple units/control groups. There is a ton of stuff to be done.
b) Optimizing the workqueue, ie. is highly correlated to how good your multitasking is. For instance, leading two units to scout in 1 sec is not good enough if you send them to the same path because your accuracy is bad. Sending them to two different meaningful locations, with a plan for each of them, is. However, correlation does not imply causation.
It should be noted that high APM does not make you good, but your APM will go up while you're getting better. Think of it as obtaining a natural aptitude with the game's mechanics. After a while, it may develop as a bit of a reflex, leading to high spamming APM, but there's no doubt that during that time, the player is 100% prepared to squeeze every single bit of (meaningful) actions into all that "spam".
I'm no progamer so this is just a guess, but it looks like an order can be fine-tuned while underway: order some units to move somewhere at a very low degree of accuracy and then fine-tune while they are underway, for example.
Where the initial click is accurate, this would look a lot like spamming but I can see how it would become a reflex.
It's not about the muscles being warmer, it's about getting in the zone and staying. It's a bit like when a tennis player is waiting for the other to serve, they don't just remain static, they are constantly moving.
Don't confuse APM as the measurement of performance. It's just one measurement of performance. 400 APM doesn't always beat 200 APM. APM has diminishing returns. However, a high rate of meaningful actions will beat a lower rate.
What I'd like to know is how these guys avoid suffering from repetitive strain injuries (RSI)? Or do they just play through the pain? Or maybe they drop like flies from the competitive gaming world after a few years because their bodies can't take it anymore?
I'm curious too. One thing that strikes me as unusual (and perhaps others can lend some sort of insight here) is that I have been working with PCs on a daily basis, often for excessive lengths of time (12-16 hours a day or more) for about 24 years now.
At no time during any of these years have I ever encountered symptoms of RSI, or required any special breaks. I have terrible posture and I don't go to any lengths to protect myself against RSI, either. I've wondered if perhaps moving in a more digitally-inclined direction has somehow led to us being more conditioned to deal with these repetitive movements, or if I'm just lucky (or, more scary to think about, destined for some sort of horrible crippling onset of RSI at some point soon)?
Chances are you are one of the lucky ones, though it doesn't mean that your luck will not end at some point (your body can compensate for a long time, but when it can't anymore, symptoms can appear rather quickly).
And in it they mention that some people do all the wrong things and never seem to get RSI. Better not to count on luck, though. I now wish I had taken preventive measures much earlier. I have my first physical therapy appointment next week...
I'm much the same. I always figured it was one of those things where when you've always used your body to do certain things from an early age, it's so well adapted that the action is no signficant burden at all.
Most people can walk a very long way without becoming too tired, even if they could only run or cycle a short distance. Their threshold for that kind of activity is low enough that walking just doesn't tax them.
Personally, I have a limit on how many push-ups or crunches I can do in a set: with training over the years, the numbers have gone up, but I always start to feel it after a while and eventually I have to stop. However, I know people who can outlast a bleep tape and still be doing crunches with correct form and only a little tiredness. It's so easy for them that there is negligible cumulative fatigue.
Personally, I've been using computers since I was small, and I also play a musical instrument and play sports that involve a lot of arm/wrist/hand movements. I've never adopted the kind of "bad habits" that many people of my generation who only started typing lots as adults have: I've just always kept my hands relaxed, wrists aligned, etc. because using my hands and fingers efficiently comes naturally to me. Maybe we're both just lucky, but I suspect we also have bodies that have adapted to this particular kind of task from an early age and we've never got into the kinds of bad habits that tend to exacerbate any natural predisposition to RSI. Which is still lucky in a way, I suppose.
Exercising is probably what helps you. Most RSI sufferers don't exercise enough (myself included).
I don't think it has to do with habit; a lot of RSI sufferers, myself included, started using computers very young. Humans have evolved to walk long distances, but we haven't evolved to sit all day holding our arms in front of us in a relatively static position, doing repetitive wrist and hand movements. If on top of that you don't exercise, have weak muscles overall and bad blood flow... Well, that's asking for trouble.
A lot of IT and Programming work is a lot of reading punctuated by short bursts of typing behaviour and 'walking speed' amounts of clicking. Stuff like typing dictation or pro star craft players is constantly clicking and typing, so I'm not surprised that you don't have RSI problems. Try taking 10 pages of written text and typing it out with no breaks, you'll feel the pain soon enough.
Or your like those people who never have problems with their teeth or eyes despite abusing both. Some people are just built better, other people have weaker systems like skin prone to excema, but since it is internal it's less obvious.
That must've been a figure of speech. How can one actually make their hands bleed by typing? Maybe if you glue sanding paper on your keyboard, but still.
You can do it by hitting keys really fast 16 hours a day for several weeks, apparently. It wasn't a figure of speech. You're underestimating how hard the top players train.
I said "hands" above but maybe it was only his keyboard (left) hand.
I think the right gear has a lot to do with it, a good mouse/mousepad and keyboard can be the difference between night and day. I had a lot of stress with my old mouse because the movements were not precise, that and the right mouse button was hard to click, my hands had to compensate a great deal and this caused a lot of stress.
I think that with the right gear and proper technique, you can easily avoid RSI, just look at typists they do 300 apm easy :)
I think you can fight through the pain. I had it a bit as a kid from excessive game-playing, but I kept going and eventually it went away and never came back.
By the way, the second player we see is MooN.. many says he's the best player of war3 of all time since he's been at the top scene for so much time.
And it's true that in warcraft3, APM is less important than starcraft since you have less "things" to do, but the thing you actually focus on are way more important.
And by the way, 300 apm is an exageration.. usually it's around 250+ and again, this is not always necessary. For instance, in the first 30-45 seconds of the game, you could actually use only 30 apm or so.. however, spamming (mass clicking) helps some players to focus and be ready for when the game "really" start.
>>300 apm is an exageration.. usually it's around 250+
Actually all top Terran players(Flash, Ruby, Fantasy) have around 400 APM. The other 2 races are not so micro intensive, but still 300 is not good enough to win a big torney.
I'm curious. Is there a public database out there of matches played between high-profile players and the results? I'd like to do my own analysis of the data if possible.
Yes, I should probably have added that link. But if you are a newbie to Starcraft, you should probably start with HDsc and Husky to get familiar with the game. They're more like sports commentators, while Day[9] is more like a chess teacher.
I can see how that makes sense. I guess it depends on your type of personality and what will hook you more. It's the difference between listening to a song and looking at the sheet music and trying to understand how it works.
Some people might like one more than the other in the beginning, and I assumed that most people would probably like to simply listen to the song before diving in the mechanics. But maybe that's wrong with this crowd.
Personally I just want to watch the game and I tend to enjoy a 15 minute cast from Husky a lot more than a 60 minute analysis from Day9. It's just a personal preference, Day9 is very good at what he does but usually I just want to enjoy the action.
Holy crap -- I went to college with that guy. I always knew he was really, really into Starcraft, but I had no idea he had legions of internet followers.
Somehow, even with doing all that, he had time to do some really interesting math research. You'll find quite a few results if you search for him on Google Scholar.
Yeah, I know a fair number of people who say they have no interest in gaming, but that sc2 replays are damn entertaining to watch. Given how balanced the game is, and how good it looks, I hope sc2 can start attracting some serious sponsorship and advertising money.
Both HD and Husky's channels have over 100k subscribers, Day9 is quite popular, and even non-competitive show matches can attract over 5k users on ustream. I'm a huge football (soccer) fan, but I honestly enjoy watching competitive sc2 matches more.
EDIT: What I should add is that the commentators add serious entertainment value when they cast the matches.
If you're going to pick one, I recommend HDStarcraft; his commentaries have the best stuff/fluff ratio IMO. I enjoyed his casts so much I tossed him a couple of bucks.
I wish there was something like StarCraft, but where you can actually focus on command. A real general wouldn't be ordering individual units around, and it's silly that most strategy games implement things at that level.
You should just be able to give high-level commands like "build a base there", "focus on Air-to-Ground development" etc.
The higher-level the commands, the fewer of them you give, and the more the game becomes random and no fun.
The stuff that real generals do is, no doubt, impossible to simulate, because it's all staff management and delegation. You don't pick the location of the base, but you do try to pick the right officer to head up the team that's in charge of surveying possible sites for the base. You pick appropriate subordinates and make sure they have the resources they need, and then get yourself driven around from base to base, meeting with the troops and keeping them motivated. Decisions like "actually I think Colonel Smith would be better than Colonel Jones for this particular task" wouldn't make much of a game.
The amount of time a general spends making specific warfighting decisions like "Let's attack the enemy at point A at time T with forces F" must be pretty damn minimal.
I don't mean quite at that level, I think "Commander" is more accurate than "General" in this context.
I just mean that there's a large amount of manual drudgery to playing games like StarCraft, and it would be nice if the game wasn't unfairly balanced in the favor of people who are really good at said drudgery.
For example, early in any StarCraft 1 game (I haven't played SC2) you have to do an exact amount of tasks in some exact order to get an early game Zealot or Zergling rush.
It'd be nice if you could just command that instead of manually mining a set amount of resources, construct a Gateway just as your nth Probe gets constructed etc.
Another example is unit production. If you have resources being mined you have to constantly switch between that and telling the computer again that you want X marines and Y Battle-cruisers or something. It'd be nice if you could just leave that on some production preset so that you could focus on warfare.
You may want to check out something from the Total Annihilation lineage. repeat build-queues dumping to a predefined rally point or patrol are standard. Supreme Commander 2 if you're looking for something commercial, or anything running on the Spring RTS engine if open source.
You're kinda asking for a game that implements the DWIM instruction, but there are indeed higher-level RTSes (eg Hearts of Iron). That's not really the point of Starcraft - you might as well ask for an FPS where you order the guy around with vocal commands rather than having to aim yourself. SC2 does remove some of the busywork clicking though, which is nice.
You go from Stone Age to Information Age in about 45-50 minutes with awesome multiplayer. It is my 2nd favorite RTS behind Starcraft. Still can be very competitive and requires decent APM and multitasking, but its on a much more Macro strategic scale.
For typists, 60 words per minute is about 60x6=360 key presses per minute (6 = ave word length of 5 + a space).
Watch a guitarist's or pianist's fingers, and it's quite amazing how fast the movements are (even or especially when the fingers are your own). Writing with a pen requires surprisingly rapid movements. It can be quite hard to even follow them - the hand really is quicker than the eye. We have amazing engineering.
APM is not that important. It is just the age old problem that a measurable factor will tend to overshadow other factors that are not as easily measurable.
What is much much more important for the game of Starcraft is split second decision making ability to micro and macro, overall awareness, having a large number of possible strategies and unit interactions stored in your mind and ready for instant recall, etc., none of which are really measurable.
A player that has less APM can be much better at micromanaging his/her units than a player with larger APM. The less APM player can just make sure that all those clicks and button presses count more.
Blizzard decided to measure current APM and give you a real time readout for Starcraft 2 which very predictably resulted in a lot of spamming, i.e., players meaninglessly cliking their mouse and pressing buttons in order to raise their APM and to convince anyone watching them that they are really really good.
Those will be meaningless for anyone who hasn't watched a lot of pro Starcraft already. It took me six months before I felt comfortable watching games without english commentary.
I'd suggest starting with the Gom TV tournaments, which have commentary geared towards those new to Korean Starcraft:
After that, I'd suggest violetak, which does pretty good sports-style commentary, or Day9, who does really in-depth analysis (although he's starting to focus almost exclusively on SC2).
I have played SC, WC3 and the SC2 Beta and I love them all, but I feel as though they need to implement a more complex macro system to allow for advanced players to not need APM's this high. For me personally, it is just too tiring (physically) to attempt to consistently play 100+ APM games.
Heh, it seems a lot of Starcraft enthusiasts are lurking around HN. Last time I've been on /r/starcraft's IRC channel half of the people where programmers (no not progamers). Coincidence, you tell me! :)
It is unnecessary to work that hard at it to enjoy it. SC2 matches you against players of equivalent skill level. It may be an ego bruise to be in the bronze level instead of platinum or diamond, but you can still have fun with it.
You may notice that the player repeatedly strikes the same key in quick succession. Usually this is what some call "Spam" and count as actual actions for this metric but are not discrete actions that affect gameplay.
A friend of mine started getting involved in the competitive Starcraft scene, and I noticed this tendency while watching him play. I think that any given player's APM is non-trivially influenced by the numerical "pissing contest" effect; every time I see a video like this it makes me want to see someone get really skilled while maintaining a reasonable APM and mop the floor with everyone else, just to show that it's a silly measurement.
EDIT: Full disclosure; I have played Starcraft since it came out in 1996, I possess a so-called "reasonable APM," and my spamming friend with an APM in the triple-digits could wreck me probably without even looking at the screen. I will never forget watching my entire fully-upgraded army somehow crumble impotently against a small, carefully-controlled contingent of foot soldiers at the perimeter of his base.
"ur micro is terrible dude, lol"
When did I hit the button that turned my guys into papier-mâché?!
I felt this way until I tried it. The rationalization, which I agree with as well, is that spamming in the early game and keeping up a steady rhythm "warms you up" in a way that makes it easier to maintain that speed when you really need it for micro-intensive portions of the game. So I don't believe it's really a pissing contest for very many players. (Although it's a poor metric.)
Also worth considering is that high APM is an unnatural requirement imposed by some limitations particular to SC:BW -- no automining, huge armies but a control group size limit, queued units consume minerals immediately (thus queueing is suboptimal.) In other RTSes without limitations like this, it's much more practical to have a lower APM. For example, in WC3, which has less units on the field at once and less base management, some players have been successful at a near-pro level with only around 60 APM. In SC2, with automining and large control groups, it seems like the best current players are frequently only between 100-150.
Fascinating! I never thought about using spamming as a "warm up" for late-game encounters which actually require triple-digit APMs to play at full effectiveness. Thanks for this post.
a player's APM isn't directly related to their skill, but all the Korean professionals are quite fast (300 and above). there are so many things going on in the game, you really do need that much speed to play professionally and compete
"Spam" is done as part of warming-up during pre-game chat and during approximately the first 10s of most builds.
These players aren't spamming. They're selecting individual unit abilities within multiple control groups and switching off the membership of said groups in real-time.
That documentary clip is somewhat misleading. Some very strategic top-level Starcraft players with excellent micro-control can have as low as 200-250 APM. Some macro-oriented players such as Bisu ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Taek-Yong ) have ~420 APM.
Though APM is a datum which has grown during the evolution of the game, Flash ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Young-Ho ) ,the current highest ranked Starcraft player in the world, only has "average" APM for a pro gamer.
At the pro level, success is less about "action volume" and more about which actions one chooses to take.
For those that wish to learn more about the Korean pro Starcraft scene, I urge you to watch the English YouTube commentaries at SC2GG ( http://starcraft.homelinux.org/VODTracker/#v ).
That, also right clicking to move a unit, or setting a rally point, or mashing S or H to make a unit stop. There are a lot of actions that you can do that count in the metric and are spammed a lot.
Right, but what a lot of people don't realize is that what looks like "spam" is actually careful micro. In order to get the most effective unit control, it's actually necessary to order your units to hold position quite frequently while they're being positioned. It gives you some advantage, for example, if you just send your unit somewhere, it's possible for an enemy player to get close to your units and draw them to a disadvantageous place and kill them, where if you tell them to hold position this isn't possible.
So what you are seeing that looks like spam is actually individually grouping large amounts of units and positioning and holding position at just the proper point.
the metric came originally from a program called BWChart (http://bwchart.teamliquid.net/), and calculated APM based on all keystrokes and mouse clicks. So for the first 30 seconds of a game, it's trivial for anyone to have an APM of above 300. The pros, though, are able to maintain an insane 300+ APM over long games while maintaining meticulous control over their units.
No it's not. You don't know what you're talking about at all. If you just right click to move somewhere once per second that'd be 60 apm already. But that's not enough. You need to update where you're going more than once per second most of the time, especially to make sure your character doesn't attack anything and waste his attack cooldown. Then add in casting spells, using items, muling, looking at other parts of the map, extra control needed during hero fights, etc
And BTW don't think apm is the only thing you do. You need to be constantly scanning the minimap, keeping track of where enemy heros are, keeping track of what items the enemy heros have, how much mana they are at, where your team is, starting a mental timer every single time a spell is cast so you automatically know when the cooldown will end (both enemy and friendly spells), and more.
Where did you point out that you prefer the one unit game?
Essentially everything you put in this second comment is absent from the first- it's in your head, but not anyone else's until you say it. Anyone who knows what Dota is will know why it only needs 100 apm, but to anyone who doesn't? It's disingenuous. Your value judgment of 300 apm was completely absent, as was your reason for your (again, unmentioned) preference.
It's not even clear how you prefer the one unit game- to play, or to watch? They both merit claim as a spectator sport. Is your preference complete, partial, or completely uninspected? Not everyone thinks like you (snark: thankfully), so please do us some favors and try not to leave all your relevant assumptions outside of the conversation.
DaviN doesn't "school" Zacard. Even relatively low apm pros like grubby and tod played with 200+ apm, and grubby's apm has gone up recently.
I can play with 90 apm, and let me tell you I do lots of stuff late and some not at all. 90 apm is not at all competitive with pros (though you could still win sometimes if something big goes your way, e.g. unscouted expansion and some good creep steals).
The importance of APM always struck me as evidence of misguided design in Starcraft/Starcraft II. It takes emphasis off the parts I find fun (the strategy), and puts it on the parts of the game that aren't interesting at all: micromanagement of units is just drudgery.
To increase the strategy and reduce the drudgery, you could either implement APM restrictions directly on the player (drop clicks, etc. -- very annoying) or you could design units to be maximally effective by default, without micromanagement.
Actually, that's the nice thing with SC2. First, APM apparently has gone down with SC2 because a lot of the drudgery is being taken care of. Most of the APM is spent on macro and micro that makes a real difference. Micro is an important element of the game. Watch some good games on YouTube, and you can see how players will micro certain units in a controlled movement (Move/Shoot/Move/Shoot), or splitting different units up rather than just blindly moving them forward in a single mass.
That being said, the second part is really where the new Battle.Net and SC2 design shines. I'm not a pro-player by any stretch of the imagination. However, SC2 makes playing online fun. The majority of the games I play are intense, even though I'm hitting only about 40 APM. The match making system is excellent, and so each game I'm playing against people who are usually at my skill level.
So rather than change the game, they worked hard at good match making, and they succeeded.
I wouldn't say a game that sold 10 million units and has a thriving professional competitive scene 10 years after release is "misguided" just because you don't like it.
The required APM has dropped pretty significantly in SC2, and you see a wider range within competitive play. There's still a lot of non-strategic crap to deal with, but it's improved and at least your units will usually go in the direction you ask them to.
> That means in 60 seconds, you need to accomplish over 300 things.
These are totally different. Although a pro SC player accomplishes a lot more than a beginner, I'm pretty sure there's no one out there that's actually doing 300 different things a minute - they are just pressing buttons 300 times. Most of it is switching between hotkeys to check if units are complete, ordering units to slightly different positions, etc. There's a lot of spamming going on too (like mashing the first hotkey for no good reason) to keep the APM rate high.