UC Berkeley Starcraft Class, Week 1
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 9:45PM 
A screenshot of how StarCraft looked early in development.Tonight I attended the much-talked-about StarCraft class at UC Berkeley as an observer. (Insert StarCraft joke about Observers.)
The main lecturer is the young Alan Feng. Mr. Feng is a physics student who says he's been playing StarCraft "for 2.5 years, 6 months on the pro level." He also had help leading the class from a guy named Yosh (I forget his real name, but I call people by their chosen names anyway), and a third guy who I only remember as Mumbling Guy. I would call Feng by his gaming name too, but I forgot what it was because he only said it once.
Feng and Yosh are an interesting contrast. Feng is endearingly highfalutin while Yosh is an old-timer (StarCraft-wise) who tells the young-uns how it used to be. Feng began the class this way:
There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.
There are not more than five primary colors, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen.
There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.
In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack: the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers.
--Sun Tzu
And he added:
In Starcraft, there are only three races, but more gameplay remaining than can be explored.
There was then a long stretch of administrative debris about notecards we were to turn in, about what percentage of the final grade the homework is worth, and other such banalities. Notably though, 40% of the final grade comes from the final project where students must attempt to make a new contribution to the StarCraft community in the form of an analysis of some part of the game. These final papers will be public and subject to peer review--no doubt incredibly merciless peer review, given the tone of most gaming communities.
Feng then gave us a short history lesson about the release of StarCraft. It was announced in 1995, though it didn't release until 1997. Feng showed us graphs and stats of how many people had computers back then, what power they were, how many had internet access, and so on. His point was that StarCraft had a dramatically larger chance for success in 1997 than it did in 1995, so their delay was fortuitous.
As an aside, I'll point out that this involved Microsoft Powerpoint slides. One student asked if the slides would be available and Feng said no, that the slides don't contain anything useful except pictures anyway. That's an interesting statement and he's right. I hope presenters will learn that Powerpoint slides are a generally terrible way of conveying information. Especially if they have terrible typography and blocky graphs as these did. (Apple Keynote can at least look nice.) But whatever, let's move on.
Yosh then gave us 20 or 25 minutes of reminiscing about the history of the best StarCraft players. Almost everyone he mentioned is Korean, of course. I felt I had something in common with Yosh as he told us he's been playing and following his game for 10 years now, competing in tournaments and trying to improve.
He explained how various players evolved or changed the game. Boxer's initial dominance gave hope for Terran players in the early days. In fact, when asked who in the room is a Terran player because of Boxer, several students raised their hands. (Nerdy joke: is Boxer overpowered in every game?) Apparently Boxer went to the army for 2 years, and although he didn't get to play as much there, he still did play and the army cadets created a special army StarCraft team, just so he could keep playing. When he returned to the game, he made up for his generally weaker game by becoming much more bold, and pulling off insane strategies that no one else would use, like a fake base in the middle of the map.
Yosh told us about the personalities of several players. One of them he said never smiles or frowns or makes any expression at all...except for the one in the picture he showed us. Another has bravado, another was extremely effeminate. Some were known for their micro-management skills, others for their creativity, others for their consistency. One top player is called "cheater Terran" because he always seems to have more units than you'd think he'd be able to at any given time. It seems that "every gaming community is a weird mirror image of every other gaming community."
After this walk down memory lane of Korean Starcraft champions, Yosh let Feng take over for the last leg of the lecture. Feng talked about the different kinds of resources in the game. There are raw resources, which he defines as those that the Starcraft game construct knows about. Minerals, gas, population limit, creep/pylon fields, energy (for casting psionic storm, etc). There are also physical resources, which he defines as things outside the game that exist in the physical world (perhaps a misnomer?). These are things like attention (arguably the most important one in StarCraft), APM: actions per minute (arguably the one that a supposed strategy game should NOT focus on at all), physical endurance, state of mind, knowledge of the game, analysis, etc. I asked him to add yomi to the list, the ability to read the opponent's mind. He did not know the term, but I had earlier given him my book, so I'm sure he will soon. Yes he said, ability to read the opponent is another resource to draw on that exists outside the game construct.
Then there are what Feng calls transformational resources. These are things you convert raw or physical resources into other resources. The most common one is simply your "army." You use your APM (clicking speed skills) along with minerals and gas and time, and you convert all that into units that compose your army. That army is capable of taking over territory or killing enemy units or defending a new expansions, etc.
Feng's point here is a good one. He's trying to get the students to think of the game as a big collection of resources and your decisions are about how to shift those resources around. It's easy to overlook how many resources are really involved in a decision, and if you overlook some, you aren't understanding the real implications of your decision. For example, if your population limit is 131/131, what do you do? As it stands, you cannot build more units. Should you build pylons? That means spending minerals and time. Should you attack with units you already have? That means spending units and possibly more of your attention resource. How long will it take the units to attack and trade with the enemy units? Did you scout enough to know what you'll be up against and what important thing you could attack?
Another example he gave was using raw resources to cover for a lack of physical resources. If you have very bad reaction time and you know this, then you are aware that in a surprise attack on your peons (resource gatherers), you might lose more than you really should. It might be worth it to spend minerals to build some cannons back there so that less depends on your slower reaction time. It's a tradeoff that might be worth it depending on your particular play skills.
The last example he gave was that of defending a choke point. If you control a choke point and put some cannons near it, but the enemy does not attack there, what have you spent and what have you gained? You spent time and minerals of course, but Feng was saying we shouldn't be so hasty in saying that we gained nothing. We did gain some resources here. If there is a pylon there, we increased our population limit. We also have vision to that part of the map. That means we have slightly better overall information about where the enemy is (or isn't, in this case). We prevented the enemy from scouting here, so the enemy has a slightly worse mental picture of the map. We control some territory that might not otherwise control (whatever is behind the choke point). So really there are a lot of resources to consider here, even in this very simple example where no one even attacked anyone.
And that was it for week one. A class about StarCraft at UC Berkeley.
--Sirlin
Reader Comments (238)
"surely even you would agree that there are clicks that don't have strategy, they are just extra clicks in the interface that could be removed with no loss of decision. So wouldn't you fix that if you made a new RTS?"
Managing your attention (finite amount of clicks / time) is a strategy in itself. Should I create a peon to mine? Or, should I move my overlord? Should I queue 2 zealots and tie up 200 minerals, or should I create 1 and hopefully create another without too much idle time in my gateway? These are all strategic decisions based upon an APM bounded higher than the player's capability.
In SC, you can have tactics that make your opponent devote and/or divide a part of his concentration/clicking away from what he wants to do (like harassment.) And, if you're being harassed, you can choose to invest minerals (one of your resources) to decrease the amount of concentration/clicks that he can "take" from you. This seems to be a very "strategic" decision that can only be made if your APM (and your opponent's) doesn't exceed the bound.
Sirlin:
Your statements are are revolving around an assumption that high APM is what makes the game. APM alone does not bring you victories. It does help, it's a tool you can use. But the benefits of it decrease exponentially.(diminishing returns). You should try to set this line of thought aside. Hah, I'm not even going to talk about the Guitar Hero comparison; that's deeply insulting. A good way to label Starcraft would be to call it real time chess.
I've given the idea of removing 'useless clicks' or attention sinks quite some thought. In the end I really believe it's part of the beauty which is Starcraft. The game is a masterpiece as is. It's my belief (through logical reason) that improving on the UI would actually cause a negative impact on the game.
I'm open to suggestions on how to keep the game at it's current pace with an improved UI. Most of the ones I've heard seem too artificial. Keep in mind that the current method is tried and true and is already Starcraft.
Also, I might add that I think the fact that the game is imperfectable is one of the reasons why it's lasted so long.
NoAPM, then think about this Zen question. If no StarCraft existed at all, could you imagine StarCraft? Probably not. Given that StarCraft really does exist though, can you imagine an RTS with amazingly good UI but that also has equally good strategy to StarCraft? You are saying you thought about it, and you can't. But...couldn't you imagine harder? And if even then you still can't, couldn't someone else? In the future, someone might make this exact game, and we will look silly for saying an RTS with an easy-to-use interface is necessarily less strategic, is necessarily too slow, or that necessarily degenerates to memorization and no evolution after 1 year of play. Maybe none of those things would happen, but we can't imagine it yet. It is hard to imagine things that don't yet exist.
Sirlin:
I'm not saying it's an impossibility, just that the current solutions for a tried and true method are artificial and unfullfilling. It's very possible that the solution to create chess 2.. oh I mean Starcraft 2 is a simple one but is outside of my thought spectrum. Then again, can you really create a chess 2?
Saying that tactics like harassing don't work unless the game has very high APM is just wrong. The Age Of... Series has enjoyed harassing as a major tactic across every iteration and the APM needed for the Age series is far below Starcraft.
Likewise saying that, "Well people with lower APM can win so there's no issue" is not a fair statement. It's the equivalent of saying that someone can win fight games even though they can never parry an attack. It might be true but that doesn't mean the player is on an even footing. The whole point is that for infinite APM there's a direct improvement in ability to play. We know that most/some of this is mental but physical limitations still come into it at some point.
If you look at other SPORTS.
You have a team of pro-athletes against another team of Pro-Athletes.
Who will win?
The team with the better strategy/tactics..
You have a team of pro-athletes against some B-League atlethes with a good strategy.
Who will win?
The game could go either way.
You have a team of pro-athletes which never played before with each other against a team of scrubs wit a perfect strategy.
Who will win?
The pro athletes, EVERYTIME under ALL circumstances.
Every sport has some mechanic requirement, be it fitness, height, weight, strenght, speed or whatever. Strategy and Tactics can overcome such diffrences between two opponents but only to a certain degree.
Thats exactly how it is in Starcraft.
You can beat a player with 50-70 APM advantage over you... I did that regulary back in the days (i was never fast), my play was just *smarter* than that of most people - I was no pro but some time for sure in the top 10 of my nation. Against which guys did i lose?
A: Guys that had the same speed at me and had a better understanding of the game.
B: Guys that just had WAY better mechanics.
C: Guys that have both.
It's just like in nearly EVERY other sport. If you don't want this, then you have to play a round based game like Chess, Go or Civ.
It's called "RTS", not "S".
"Real - Time - Strategy", Strategy is just occupying 1/3 even in the name of the whole genre.
"asdf: please list some clicks in StarCraft that are more than necessary to achieve what the player meant to do. This should be easy and I'm sure you can do it. If you can't name any, then other posters will name several for you. I'm surprised this is an issue because I didn't realize it was actually debated. Me being D+ or A or F isn't going to change the nature of clicks.
asdf also please give me your rank at Dune 2. That's the game with so much APM tax through bad UI that it's hard to even attack with 5 units. Surely you can't form an opinion about that game unless you are one of the best players at it, right? And if you did form an opinion, it wouldn't be a valid one unless you were one of the best players, right?"
being D+ isn't being one of the best players, not even REMOTELY close. it's the rank above the starting one. There is no F rank, so quite clearly you don't know about ladders at all, confirming what I suspected. Basically this is more equivalent to me telling you to go to a small local monthly SF tournament and play in it and not get eliminated in the first round. I'm not asking you to win evo or wcg.
Dune 2:
quote from the teamliquid forum rules on sc2:
"UPDATE 2008/03/28
From now on, anyone using the "Dune argument" will be temp banned. No warnings, just banned.
For those of you unaware of what it is, here's an explanation:
The "Dune argument" is that if we are so worried about skill, and think MBS is so detrimental to this, why don't we revert back to the Dune UI, where you could only select one unit at a time.
The counter-argument to this is obvious: If you want everything to be so easy, why don't we turn the game into an interactive movie? Why don't we just have the computer macro for you, and you can control the units!
See how silly both of these arguments are? This type of argumentation leads nowhere, as what's important is finding a balance, not going to various extremes to make silly points.
Thank you for your co-operation,
- FrozenArbiter"
I could say the same thing about street fighter, why not make every move just be 1 button like smash brothers? why have motions at all in hd remix? but it's a ridiculous argument.
Sirlin, I bought your book a while back and enjoyed it, so thanks for writing it!
However, I disagree about you on APM.. Actually it's not as much disagreeing as much as not thinking it's universally true..
SC is a game that values both strategy and physical ability, like most RTS games. But in this case, lowering the dexterity required to play the game at a high level is not desireable. Yes, I'm sure it's possible to create deep games with way less steep APM requirements (as is evidenced by a plethora of turn-based strategy games - ie Chess, Go) but the APM intensive gameplay of SC is beloved by many.
You (seemingly) want a game where the player who is the superior strategist will ALWAYS beat the faster player, even if the difference in speed is vast and the difference in strategy is not.. I don't. There are plenty of games that work this way but SC is what it is - a highly physical and strategical RTS.
That there is ALWAYS more you could have done, ALWAYS a few seconds that can be shaved off on completing various tasks, ALWAYS room for doing a few more things simultaneously, is appealing to me.
The current best player in the world, Kim Taek Yong aka Bisu, plays at 400 APM and it shows - he is famous for his insane multitasking when harassing, dropping and attacking on several points all at once. He is also famous for revolutionizing the PvZ matchup - in 2007! Almost a decade after the games release.
One of 2008s best players (along with Bisu) was Song Bu Kyung, Stork. Comparatively he plays at a modest 250~300 (I play at around 200-250 and I havent played seriously for years) and plays a completely different, more conservative style.
Throughout the years (they are both fairly young, but have met frequently since 2007) they have built up an a record vs eachother of 8 wins each.
I like this, different approaches, really even results. Perhaps the point is hard to make with progamers as examples, as they all have high proficency in all aspects of the game.. But I like that you can win by sheer mechanical superiority, I like that you can win by simply outsmarting someone - and most of all I like that you can win by using a combination of both.
You should always be able to make use of faster hands, there should always be something you can do better.
If I'm wrong about what you mean, and the type of actions you would want alleviated are things like.. sending workers to mine (as SC1 has no rallymining) or grouping multiple buildings (as in SC1 you can only select 1 building at a time), SC2 will have both these things - to the dismay of many, to the joy of other.
I'm fine with these additions as long as there are new things to do.
I don't know if I got my point across very well, but basically what I wanted to have said is that Starcraft is a physical game - and we like it that way :)
Regards,
Jonathan Walsh
(FrozenArbiter on Teamliquid.net)
This was written in response to Sirlin's comment on the FIRST page here, I'm very sorry if I talked about things that have been clarified since, but I don't feel like reading 10 pages right now.. If it's the case, just let me know and I'll go look your posts up.
- FA
Logo; "Likewise saying that, "Well people with lower APM can win so there's no issue" is not a fair statement. It's the equivalent of saying that someone can win fight games even though they can never parry an attack. It might be true but that doesn't mean the player is on an even footing. The whole point is that for infinite APM there's a direct improvement in ability to play. We know that most/some of this is mental but physical limitations still come into it at some point."
While a fighter may not be able to parry a punch, he should have a far superior grappling or jiu-jitsu game[since he has neglected to train his standup game apparently]. If he is able to (by skill, intelligence and deep thought) force the game to be played in his area of expertise. Who will win?
@NoAPM
That doesn't make any sense, the player who can't parry is still at a disadvantage. They can only win by forcing the game to do a certain route. Likewise the low APM SC player can only win by forcing the game to be about macro and fights favoring less APM. Meanwhile if you had high APM people that were chosen for their strategy rather than just having high APM they'd be at a very large advantage. There's no reason why someone with high APM can't be as good at strategy as someone with low APM. Either way you slice it you're rewarding a level of APM that goes beyond mental limitations.
Logo;
It makes sense. You've failed to see that the player who can parry cannot fight on the ground. So he's at that disadvantage. It all comes down to utilizing what you have trained in and trained for. You can revolve game plans around that.
In Starcraft APM is another thing you can train in. It helps, but it's not as impactful as you think after a certain point.
You're right. There is no reason why someone with high APM can't be good at strategy as someone with low APM. But it also goes the other way around. There's no reason why someone who's a genius tactician can't have high APM.
You can argue that you don't wish to learn APM, but this is almost void. It's just another aspect in the deep art which is Starcraft. It's just another aspect you should think about it. You can choose to focus in it and be better than the competition or focus on something else you think will give you a greater advantage.
Also it seems like most of anti-APM arguments in these comments are formulated around this false assumption that APM gives you a gigantic advantage. This is not true at all. There is a certain APM limit you must have to play the game at the top levels, this is just entry level. After that the more you train it and the higher you raise your APM the more useless it gets.
FrozenArbiter: StarCraft aside, your comment is actually pretty amazing because it's done what no one else has done in hundreds of comments across two websites.
No ad homimen attack
No straw man argument (though somewhat misrepresents what I meant accidentally, see below)
No non-sequitur
No "have to be a ranked player in Dune 2 to make any statement about Dune 2" fallacy
Virtually everything said so (including all of Rekrul's statements) are just variations on these fallacies, plus a few more that asdf has managed to use.
To address the actual point, I'll give a Street Fighter example. Sorry for that, but it really does fit well in this case. I already cringe to read the fallacies that will follow claiming "StarCraft doesn't equal Street Fighter, therefore the example is wrong." (Wrong, it is possible to give examples of a concept in a different context.)
Anyway, I could say that performing difficult special moves in Street Fighter is "beloved" by the players. It's true, it mirrors StarCraft players feeling that way toward mechanics. If you interviewed an SF player about this, he would say all the same things you're saying. That you can practice and get better so stop whining, that it differentiates players, that it allows for more diversity, etc. Also, they would claim that there'd be nothing left if you removed the execution difficulty there. They would then take the objection to an entirely new level with a straw man argument where they say if the game has no dexterity tests at all, it doesn't work as a game anymore. Remember that the original claim in this example was making special moves easier, only a tiny subset of all dexterity demands in the game. Pixel-precision spacing is still tested the same as always, so is doing your dragon punch 1/60th of a second later to make it work, and so on. A wealth of dexterity-related things remain, even though the worse offenders--dexterity without strategy--are removed.
(Yes I recognize that even non-strategic decisions in StarCraft split attention so that is one difference in these examples. If you want to keep attention split, fine, that can be designed but it doesn't need to come from extra clicks from old UI.)
What I'm saying is the parallel in what's said here is so close that it's striking. I don't doubt that mechanics are "beloved" but I think it's very possible (likely?) that a new game with say, automining and MBS, will also be "beloved." Maybe not by you (though years from now, maybe yes by you actually).
Next, be careful to avoid the straw man argument about removing all dexterity from the game. Imagine this theoretical game. It's not exactly the one I would make, it's just to illustrate a point. This game is exactly StarCraft1 but with 3 changes: 1) auto-mine, 2) MBS, and 3) if you play play past 250APM, your clicks don't register for a couple seconds. Please don't tell me that game is badly designed, I know it's clunky and artificial, that isn't the point. Does this game test dexterity? Yes. Does it give players the ability to out-micro their opponents? Yes. After 1 year of play, would this game be "all memorization" with no actual gameplay left? No, that is a sky-is-falling argument that doesn't make sense for this game.
You could certainly tell me you personally don't like this game, but it shows an example of turning down the APM knob in a way that doesn't turn it to zero. So when you make arguments about why you don't like that game, you can't include things like "there'd be no micro, there'd be no way for players to differentiate each other." You also can't say "Sirlin wants a player with barely better strategy and 100x worse mechanics to win." That player would lose in the example game given because mechanics are not removed at all. All that's changed is a cap on the maximum. (You say unbounded rewards on speed are good, I say they are only good if you'd rather disproportionately reward mechanics over strategy, that's the whole question.)
So now we've reached the point of being able to actually talk about what we're talking about. You could still reject the cap, but it's been hard to so far because only fallacy arguments have been presented until recently (the same fallacy arguments I had to suffer through for a couple years on Street Fighter development, actually). I'm too exhausted over this by now, because who really cares anyway. Even in the extreme case where the game I'm talking about would be better in every possible way and the more extreme case where you would agree if you played it--even then--what good would it do to "convince" you of it now? Maybe none? No matter what happens, your forum posters will slip back into ad hominen, staw man, non-sequitur, and "only Dune 2 champions can comment on Dune 2" comments, so there isn't much incentive to go on here.
How about I ruin this comment by closing with a jackass comment? Dear asdf: it's difficult to discuss design concepts with you because you aren't a game designer. Being only a player, you just don't get a lot of things, and please show me reviews of games you've designed so we know if we can listen to you or not. (Do you see how annoying that kind of reasoning is?)
@NoAPM
But that's my entire point... He's at a disadvantage just like the APM player. My argument is that APM in SC Is as part of the game as core mechanics like parrying from fighting games. Players who have more of it assuming all else equal will always be at an advantage over players who don't.
Is it boring to watch these 250 APM Macro players play? No it's not it's just as interesting, if not more so. So why are we intentionally limiting the UI and ease to actually execute our desires if we know the game is still fun when players are forced to execute at 250APM rather than 400APM? People keep acting like simplifying the interface will suddenly allow for every player to master all three races and all strategies for those races. In reality it won't, it still takes revolutionary players and the slow evolution of thought for the strategies to develop and advance.
Well, the thing about your 250 APM example is that everyone good at the game is going to be equally good good mechanically.. I like it better when there's no cap on mechanics OR strategy.
I'll still really enjoy SC2 tho, I'm almost certain. Afterall, I've liked games that aren't SC - just not liked them as much (and this is for many reasons, so I'm not giving the APM aspect all the credit :P).
Anyway, to non-SC players our community probably seems fairly insane at times, but we've actually come a long way in terms of moderation (believe it or not).
When SC2 had just been announced, MBS debates raged hard and the solutions were usually to "demand a return to the SC UI". Nowadays it's more about how to implement something that adds meaningful actions, so that we keep the speed reward while adding strategy (ie it shouldn't be something that directly mimicks the SC UI, it has to actually add something to the game strategically).
For example, the Warp-In function Blizzard already added to to Protoss. Allows a faster player to do it faster and also offers a ton of strategic opportunity.
So, again, I ideally want a game where there's no cap on any skill aspect. I'm not sure if the last bits of the post were directed at me and asdf or both but there's one part I agree strongly with:
"I'm too exhausted over this by now, because who really cares anyway."
When someone linked me this my first thought was literally "god, not again", the past 2 years of MBS debate have been just about 1.9 years too many :)
"Is it boring to watch these 250 APM Macro players play? No it's not it's just as interesting, if not more so. So why are we intentionally limiting the UI and ease to actually execute our desires if we know the game is still fun when players are forced to execute at 250APM rather than 400APM? People keep acting like simplifying the interface will suddenly allow for every player to master all three races and all strategies for those races. In reality it won't, it still takes revolutionary players and the slow evolution of thought for the strategies to develop and advance."
And it's even more interesting to watch the 250 apm player beat the 400 apm player (or vice versa).. :) Without a cap people have more room to choose what they want to spend their time on, like the difference between BoxeR and Oov (it was even more true in the past, players are becoming a bit more unified as the game is 10 years old).
BoxeR used to be famous for spending all his attention on micro, backed up by clever strategy.
Oov used to be famous for not knowing how to spell the word micro, much less perform any, and overwhelming his opponent with legions of units, backed up by solid strategy.
Both have 2 OSL titles (Oov beat BoxeR 3-2 to win one of his, in one of the closest Finals ever).
"Well, the thing about your 250 APM example is that everyone good at the game is going to be equally good good mechanically.. I like it better when there's no cap on mechanics OR strategy." - FrozenArbiter
That's it, right there.
Ah and something I forgot to mention:
Boxer: 250~300 apm
Oov: 250~-300 apm
Savior: 250~300 apm
Nal_rA: 200-300 apm (in his early years he was at 200, I think he picked up after a few years tho).
These are some of the most succesful players of all time, and they all have fairly "low" APMs. Here's a european example:
Fisheye (2nd place WCG 2003, losing only to Korean player Ogogo, beating Korean Progamer Silent_Control in groups) - 100 apm (yes, really, and he was one of the best non-korean players for YEARS).
Obviously he was pretty smart to be able to do so well with such a low APM..
My point is, there might not be a cap on APM, but the gains become smaller and smaller and smaller while getting faster gets harder and hard and harder.
There's like ten pages of comments here and I'm only on the sixth.
So, I don't know if the topic has moved on from stuff like this or not:
All I was trying to say about the psi storming is that players who can do that need to act and click very fast because its hard to do, and storming in such a way SHOULD be hard to do and not be dumbed down.
But I just wanted to bring up another game that had moves that were strong but hard (back then) to do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=181bEWh0KqI
I'm just posting this as a reference for anyone who thinks making something hard to do excuses it being powerful. Though there probably isn't anyone who thinks that.
I mean, I think psi storming is good. It has its uses, but I wish storming many, many enemies at once would require less finger exercises. And I don't want storm to be nerfed, in damage or otherwise, just because it'd be easier to do now. There should be some middle ground.
@ FA
So if that is true, does that mean that high APM numbers are simply a sideeffect of abundant practice and not actually a victory factor? That would be nice - and if that is the case the Argument "mechanical skill is necessary for player differination" has been defeated by your own Argument.
Either different playstiles don´t depend on APM numbers or Player differination doesn´t rely on competative play - meaning that ~200 APM is used to actually play and the rest to please the fans. (A not insignificant factor, Fans=Money)
It would be really interesting to see pros actually try and minimize their APM. How much of these Actions actually matter? And would they still play different from each other?
Maybe that would be a topic for the SC class?