2010: A Space Blogyssey

I sometimes daydream about going back in history. Not in a cool way, though. I want to travel back to the time when Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos was first released, with all my present-day knowledge still intact, just to own it up and become a true cyberathlete legend. I know it sounds silly, but looking back at the really old replays, everyone sucked and I would've never lost a game (well, actually, I remember my terrible computer and internet connection totally freezing up the screen in any battle consisting of more than two and a half units, making "attack-move and hope for the best" my most everyday strategy).

Youtube user Downwhere has a fairly large collection of old Warcraft 3 replays, often commentated on by the old superstars of the day (Tillerman, Assasin etc.), for anyone who's interested. It's funny to see the low level of micro displayed by even the best players of the day, as well as the strange strategies used, funny imbalances abused and game-breaking bugs overused. Apparently, the ladder for most of Warcraft's early history was all but a joke, as I've seen for myself, after downloading really old replays and seeing the most ridiculous strategies and item imbalances (I didn't really play much back then, or at any decent level, so my memory on the subject is faint), like Goblin Landmines destroying your main hall two minutes into the game (an item that was quickly removed from ladder games. For that and more, watch this hilarious summary of imbalances and bugs (there is also a part two)) .

As far as Starcraft 2 goes, what with e-sports (ROFL) and micro being the key words Blizzard is attaching to it, I doubt we'll have as bad a player base early on. Conversely, however, I expect the game balance to be at least decent, right out of the box. Anything else must be seen as a failure from the "e-sports" team.

And with that, I would like to wish you, the reader, a happy new year. May 2010 be a good and prosperous year for us all.

Note: The original entry was quite a bit longer, but I figured it derailed itself too much and as such would be better off as two separate entries. Good news is it shouldn't take too long for me to publish it, you know, since it's basically already done.

Also, I spent a good thirty minutes thinking of a good and relevant title for this entry, until I snapped and just wrote something. Sue me.

All about APM

For those of you who can't make out the butchered image Blogger forces me to limit myself to (you can always click on it to see it in its original size), it reads:

I can say its not a top game without even watching it.
Why? Because its impossible for someone with 79 apm to have decent micro and any sort of control over all his units. Doesnt matter how "close" the game is.
I thought only ROTWs allowed bad micro and low skill but i guess you top anything now.

I could fill an entire entry with low quality images like that, all of them showing the same ignorant display of sheer arrogant stupidity. And who can blame people for looking down on players with low APM? Everywhere you go in the competitive scene of Warcraft 3 or Starcraft, it is shoved in your face as something of grave importance. I find this most upsetting, for several reasons. I also feel I should clarify; The image above is regarding Warcraft 3, where average APM is quite a bit less than that of, say, a Starcraft player, due to a less crude, more easily controlled interface, for one thing.

So, what is APM?
First of all, to any "newbies" reading, APM stands for Actions Per Minute, and is just that - how many actions (unit selections, rally-point placements, mouse-clicks etc.) you perform during any given minute. Since games usually last quite a bit more than a minute, it is the average APM that often shows up on replay sites and programs (though, as I will bring up shortly, you can analyse beyond that).

What does it tell us?
So, what's the connection between APM and skill? It's fairly easy; micro and macro require actions, so the more actions you can perform the better you are. Makes sense, right? Wrong. I feel it is impossible to make such a judgement based on APM at all.

Many people will concede that APM does not equal pure skill. Rather, they mean, it gives you an idea of how fast a player is and as a result, matters quite a bit. However, I disagree yet again.

It's important to understand that it is indeed usually one's average APM people talk about. Let's think about that for a second. Do you really need high APM all game long? What about any portions of the game where you can do naught but wait, or something otherwise lacking in actions required? As you can see in the following image (again, click to enlarge it), APM varies a lot during any given game:


This is partly why the image at the start of this entry annoys me. You can't possibly get an idea of someone's micro or control based solely off their average APM. Interestingly enough, there are pro Warcraft 3 players with around 100 APM - something that usually surprises people. How can they possibly be pro with such slow "speed"?

The reality is, you have to look at players' actions during portions of the game which require them in abundance - battles, for instance. If one does this, typically through viewing a specific game's statistics with the help of a program, like BW/WC3 Chart, one notices that those pros with 100 APM certainly don't hold that average when it counts the most. It's simply thing like the slower paced early game, and time spent creeping, that give the illusion of a low-micro or slow players, because during these moments their APM drop significantly. Why, then, do a lot of pros (or even seemingly pedestrian players) have 200+ APM? Are they necessarily better? Again; no.

See, what a lot of pros like to do is "spam". They simply apply a lot of useless actions to otherwise simple tasks, as a way of warming up. Why rally your barracks to a location once, when you can do it fifteen times? And of course, most every player notices this and as a result, in an effort to imitate the pros, starts doing it themselves. I both laugh and cringe when I see players having 200 APM during the first minutes of the game and then, during battles, actually dropping down significantly. I mean, I'm fine with spamming. Spam all you want, just don't act like the resulting APM means anything. I fear, however, that unless you spam, you may lose credibility.

I myself am a low APM player. I am also fairly good at the games I play. As such, I consider it a good thing because it means I am efficient. The more you can do with as little as possible, kind of. I never spam, I fail to see the reason for it. If anything it just drains and distracts me.

Really, there is no reason to bother with APM. It doesn't tell you much about any given player, and it definitely shouldn't be the basis of judging someone's skill. Everyone is different. Some people might use more actions, others fewer. Some people spam, some don't. My point is you can't judge a player, or a game he played, by looking at his average APM. Of course there is a limit to how low it should be for you to still be a decent player, but at that point your least concern should be how many actions you perform, but rather to learn the game on a deeper level.

APM is something, if anything, that will change (not necessarily increase) as you progress. A possibly interesting statistic that lacks any real merit - at best.

Why, then, should we care about APM at all?
We shouldn't. Please stop. You're ruining my e-sports experience.

Addendum: I feel I must point out that Starcraft 2, and any future RTS game really, will have similar, even improved interfaces and controls compared to Warcraft 3. Thus, APM becomes even less relevant. I do, however, understand that the original Starcraft has a much larger base APM requirement, since you can't select multiple buildings, there are no tabs or smart casting etc.

General Thoughts on Starcraft 2

I can scarcely recall the excitement that gripped me when it was first announced, it feels that long ago. Until then, I had always felt a sequel to Starcraft nigh impossible; since it could not conceivably live up to the expectations, what with Starcraft being one of the greatest RTS games ever, not to mention being the national sport of South Korea (so much so that any non-Korean Starcraft player is referred to as a “foreigner” by the community), and as such Blizzard would simply back off from the franchise forever.

They might as well have, I feel, given their incredibly slow development. And I would love to justify it with the standard Blizzard rhetoric of “It’s done when it’s done”, that they are taking their sweet time to really perfect the game. However, just looking at how long it takes them to release a Battle Report, or update their own, official Starcraft 2 website, makes it seem more like they are just lethargic, and almost as if they don’t know what they're doing, which worries me.

I can only hope their track record is enough to rely on, but given this is the first game they’re making (along with Diablo 3) since World of Wacraft, that devourer of souls and destroyer of lore, I’m not all too optimistic. Not to mention all the emphasis on “e-sports” and whatnot. But that’s the subject of another, soon to come entry.

Oh, and welcome to my new, for lack of a better word, blog.