300 actions a minute? Truly mastering StarCraft
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
> 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.
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.
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".
Where the initial click is accurate, this would look a lot like spamming but I can see how it would become a reflex.
Lots of Korean champions have APM in the 200 range and beat those with higher APM.
Just a guess, but I would think that it has more to do with maintaining a psychological state of flow than an athletic 'warmth' of the fingers.
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.
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.
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.
My hands hurt just looking at that video...
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)?
This book has been useful to me:
http://www.amazon.com/Carpal-Syndrome-Therapy-Computer-Profe...
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...
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.
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.
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.
I said "hands" above but maybe it was only his keyboard (left) hand.
I think that with the right gear and proper technique, you can easily avoid RSI, just look at typists they do 300 apm easy :)
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.
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.
http://www.youtube.com/user/HDstarcraft
http://www.youtube.com/user/Huskystarcraft
It's surprisingly entertaining if you are familiar with the game, and almost all videos are available in 1080p.
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.
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.
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.
You should just be able to give high-level commands like "build a base there", "focus on Air-to-Ground development" etc.
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 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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Commander_(video_game)#...
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.
Maybe it's more relevant for me because I'm addicted and not competitive.
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.
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.
http://www.youtube.com/user/jon747#g/u
http://www.youtube.com/user/nevake#g/u
For first person view search for videos with FPVOD in the name.
I'd suggest starting with the Gom TV tournaments, which have commentary geared towards those new to Korean Starcraft:
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/
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).
violetak: http://www.youtube.com/user/VioleTAK
Day9: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=104...
(Jazz because jazz is generally extemporaneous, like gaming)
/silver level, APM 65
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.
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?!
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.
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.
A)autoreports your APM every 10 seconds, or
B)warns you when your APM is below a user defined threshold
let me know if there is any interest and I'll release it (windows only atm).
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.
Seriously, go pick your Internet fights somewhere else.
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.
Sure, that was Warcraft 3, but apm isn't everything, it's what you do with it.
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).
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.
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.