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Comment by johnfn | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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).

As was stated in a different comment, the spamming is probably more to keep the player warm than to raise their APM.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Your guess is in fact correct. If you watch many a game, even on YouTube, you'll find that's exactly what most professional gamers are doing.

The point with APM is not that much higher is better, but that below 80 APM you are not competitive.

Lots of Korean champions have APM in the 200 range and beat those with higher APM.

but how much "warmer" could your fingers really need to be to manage hotkeys and control groups?

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

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