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)
> In essence, wouldn't you simply be robbing mindless-Peter to pay Mindful-Paul?
Isn't that a good thing?
Phantom: spot on as always.
FrozenStorm: that's a good suggestion if I actually cared about solving this problem. The thing is, if I come up with a solution that is the greatest ever, that satisfies me and that even hardcore starcraft players agree is a deeper game, then what do I do with that solution? Nothing. It's infeasible for me to make an RTS because it's so expensive. Instead, I'm developing a "fixed" MTG. That I can almost afford to make. Have to finish Yomi card game before that though.
I think a large part of this conversation is going round and round in circles because there's isn't a clear enough sense of what the UI is actually there for. A UI is not a gameplay element. It should never be treated as a gameplay element. The UI of any program is a separate entity from the functionality of that program; it is informed by that functionality, it can get in the way of that functionality, but it is necessarily viewed on it's own merits not by what it does, but by how much you don't even notice that it is there. A UI has one role and one role only: making it as easy and unobtrusive as possible to perform the actions that the user desires.
Keeping the above in mind, I'll just go ahead and say this: WarCraft 3 has a better UI than StarCraft. On a purely UI level, WC3 is years ahead of SC. (Which how it should be since it came out years afterward)
When SC first launched, it had one of the best UIs of any RTS at the time, sure, but it's not 1998 anymore, and it has not aged well. Heck, going back to the UI from WC3 makes me want to not play SC, despite the fact that game balance and the actual units are actually handled better in many respects. It's just plain more cumbersome. And UIs are supposed to avoid the cumbersome.
WC3's addition of things like tabbing for selecting unit types in groups, casters that don't stack their casts when selected as a group but cycle through so you don't end up needing to manually select each caster to get their spell off, better queuing (you can queue workers to build multiple buildings, etc), and a few other minor improvements make it just plain easier to do things in the game. And again, this is the only thing that matters when you're talking about the quality of a user interface; it's all down to ease of use, as that's what defines a good UI. The user interface has nothing to do with balance, it has nothing to do with depth, it has simply to do with how the user is able to perform actions, and that's it. Anything else is an issue of the actual gameplay systems. Balance can be off, decisions can be made that should result in a UI change without that UI change being made, etc, etc. But the easier it is to perform actions, the better the UI. Period.
This does not mean that the game needs to be slow, or that being able to respond quickly isn't valued, but what it does mean is that the actions that you can make are not cumbersome. Having to manually select each caster in a group so that their spells don't stack uselessly is cumbersome. Having to manually select each resource node for each and every single worker unit to get the maximum level of resource extraction is cumbersome. Having to manually select 5 different buildings so that you can start unit production on all of them is cumbersome. Not having an idle worker button is cumbersome. This is bad UI on an objective level, regardless of the impact on gameplay. If the user wants to do a particular action, the best UI is the one that lets him perform that action with as few motions as possible. This is simple UI design, and it holds true regardless of anything else.
Now, minimizing the benefit of APM over strategy isn't just an issue of good UI design (it's not enough by itself), but good UI design does go a long way to minimizing APM having a disproportionate impact on gameplay.
There were some posts a while back setting up a strawman idea of having the computer take over more and more of the battle for you, so as to knock it down to show what a silly idea it is.
I would like to point out that the computer _already_does_ do a lot of things for you in Starcraft. Examples:
* Units find reasonable paths from their starting location to their destination, and path around each other
* Peons migrate throughout your mineral patches, trying to make the best use of their time
* Combat units without orders automatically engage enemy units within range
* Non-combat units without orders automatically flee enemy units attacking them
* Ranged units automatically prioritize airborne units
* Other things I'm forgetting
Things like (three ideas chosen hypothetically) automatically focusing fire, or autocasting spells, or scourge groups that avoid overkilling their targets are downright insignificant to the incredible benefit you are already getting from unit AI.
The idea hat the computer shouldn't be doing some things for you is a completely unreasonable position to take.
"Type out the word 'feared'... go ahead... How long did that take you? Probably under 2 seconds right, most likely 1sec or less."
@Lore: And now type out the same word on a rusty old manual typewriter where you have to actually use hand strength to get that letter to mash hard enough on the ink ribbon to leave an imprint. Or type on some imaginary keyboard where you have to press every letter twice for it to register. Or play a game where you require 5 actions to execute a decision that could be done in 2 with a better UI. But, why?
"but good UI design does go a long way to minimizing APM having a disproportionate impact on gameplay."
This would do almost nothing to minimize APM's impact on gameplay, the fast players would still get to do more than you in the same amount of time and have a huge advantage because of it. It might make the game more fun for beginners but that's about it.
"if I come up with a solution that is the greatest ever, that satisfies me and that even hardcore starcraft players agree is a deeper game..."
Few, if any, starcraft players are opposed to the idea of a game that would contain such a solution. They just don't want a game like that in the starcraft franchise.
Here's an example of an user interface improvement that would lower the barrier to entry for Starcraft 2. A preview for the new Halo RTS on the Xbox mentions that every unit uses the same button to activate its special abilities. This is a fantastic idea. Why should anyone have to memorize separate hotkeys for each of the many units in the game? In Warcraft III, why does my Paladin hero hit T to cast a healing spell, but the priests use E? (Answer -- because "Holy Light" doesn't have an E in it, and the Blizzard hotkey convention requires the letter used be in the name of the ability.) Most units only have one or two abilities, anyway -- why not have one key always activate ability 1, one key always activate ability 2, and so on? Casting spells and using your units should be as easy as possible.
The new World of Warcraft vehicle UI in Wrath of the Lich King works this way -- each vehicle has up to 5 abilities, each bound to a number key in order. It is really fast and easy to get in there and start firing your machine gun, stomping with your storm giant, or lobbing a flaming rock from your catapult. This idea wouldn't lower the amount of APM necessary to play the game, but it would make it easier and faster for players to make important decisions. By the way, I still don't understand what the problem with autocasting in Warcraft III was -- your army works like it's supposed to without having to click on each unit individually to make them do their job. This is very far from the game playing itself or removing important decisions from the player.
Isn't having the highest APM ALWAYS going to be advantageous though?
Yes, and that is not a bad thing by itself. What the game has to do is make most of the actions you perform involve a non-trivial decision of some sort. Because then you not only need a high APM to succeed, you need a high DPM (Decisions Per Minute) to succeed. You need both physical and mental talent. At the professional level it doesn't matter since both are in abundance. But when a new player first encounters a game with a high APM requirement, regardless of how fast he can think (his DPM), he has to get used to the interface (which may be very different from the interfaces he has used in the past), work on establishing a rhythm, and learn an large set of timing routines before he can be remotely competitive. Doing all of this takes a lot of time and practice, which isn't a bad thing for a competitive game. The key point, though, is that you are practicing a bunch of physical motions that you have to have well developed before you even get to the real heart of the game. And if you're going to spend a lot of time practicing physical skills before you can really get to the intellectual meat of the game, maybe the game should be called a sport instead.
>In essence, wouldn't you simply be robbing mindless-Peter to pay Mindful-Paul?
Isn't that a good thing?
Definitely. There's no problem with a game having a high APM requirement as long as there is a high DPM requirement associated with it. That way, the game tests the whole player rather than just his physical dexterity. Is it really surprising that a lot of people don't like games that heavily favor physical tests, when there are an equal number of people who don't like games that test only mental abilities (turn-based games)?
Games like Guitar Hero can get away with just testing dexterity and timing, since it's clear that they are designed to do that (and they do a good job too). But a game that is advertised by both its developer and its fans as deeply strategic should make it a point to present some of that strategy to new players without forcing them to jump through APM hurdles to get to the real game.
By itself, it obviously doesn't solve all that much. I believe I mentioned that in the previous half the sentence. But without good UI design, the benefit of APM is going to balloon simply because you genuinely need a lot of APM. With good UI and certain in-game resource limitations, which is the other half the equation, you do get a decrease the value of APM, simply because you run out of things to do in any given interval. It's part of the solution for creating a maximum bound on APM. (And it also makes it more fun for beginners as you mention, so it's win-win!)
(Note these numbers are arbitrary)
Lets say there are 5 things over the course of a minute that I need to make decisions about; if each decision takes 20 clicks (as an average), I need to be working at 100 APM to effectively hande them all within that minute. If on the other hand, those five things only require 5 clicks each (again, as an average), I only need to work at 25 APM to maintain the same level of effectiveness. If I am not given the opportunity to make more than 5 decisions in a minute (my queues are all full, my workers are all devoted, I have no upgrades to work on, and my units are in combat; I have nothing I can do but wait for something to resolve) that means I only need to be 1/4th as fast to be as effective. (Note, attention splitting can still occur, the methods just need to change a bit; one way could be making the player be unable to look away for a while to do something else. You get short periods where looking away even for a second becomes worse than staying focused the entire time on one sector of the map)
If on the other hand the UI sucks, you can only do so much to make it more sane. In something like Dune 2, the effective benefit of increasing APM exceeds the benefit of making better decisions by a huge margin because everything takes a lot of clicks to do. You never run up against a boundary in which you've briefly run out of actions to make as you're waiting for resolution, or rather, if you did, the game would be incredibly slow paced, which isn't good either.
"Warcraft III, why does my Paladin hero hit T to cast a healing spell, but the priests use E?"
I don't actually play WCIII, but the hotkeys are customizable IIRC from a previous conversation on this subject.
"By the way, I still don't understand what the problem with autocasting in Warcraft III was"
Auto-casting isn't inherently bad, but it does not belong in starcraft, even if you could have your units autocast in SC you wouldn't want to because spells are expensive (a unit with a full bar might cast three spells), VERY powerful, yet almost useless if slightly misplaced, so you want to control each one.
the position that blizzard takes on spell casting in SCII, is that the spells will still be casted individually, but you won't have to select individual units to do it. for instance, if you have a group of high templars selected, and tell them to psi storm something, one of them casts one psi storm, instead of all of them stacking a psi storm on the same spot, so you can cast a bunch of storms by hitting "t*click*t*click*t*click*" instead of hotkeying each templar before hand and then going "1t*click*2t*click*3t*click*..."
This is more of an information post than opinion (I hope) but I see some people with uncertainties and misinformation that I may be able to clear up.
"@Lore: And now type out the same word on a rusty old manual typewriter where you have to actually use hand strength to get that letter to mash hard enough on the ink ribbon to leave an imprint. Or type on some imaginary keyboard where you have to press every letter twice for it to register. Or play a game where you require 5 actions to execute a decision that could be done in 2 with a better UI. But, why?"
Actually I (Logo) said that. It was said as part of a discussion on what a Maximum Useful APM limit could be for a game where it'd be fast paced and 'high' without passing over into being a physical limitation for some players. So your reply really makes no sense to me. What does old keyboard have to do with anything? Do we need to take them into account when creating a target for our MUAPM?
"Also, I've heard that the game Company of Heroes already answers this entire question by having a much lower maximum useful APM, but I never played it and I don't know how they did it."
CoH (and DoW2 which you should try out since it's free through steam at the moment) lowers APM through several means, some good some bad.
-Units are made in squads so while you may have 40 'units' on screen you can only give orders to 3-6 entities.
-Units move slower
-Units die slower in general combat (certain abilities or some types of blasts can kill squads quickly though)
-Instead of traditional Resources you capture points on the map to boost income. There are no worker units
-There is little to no base building. You start at maximum population cap so there are no depots and there are only a few buildings to create (or none in DoW2's case)
-Maps are more intimate and generally have fewer active locations. You might have battles at 2 or 3 spots on a map at most and any sort of flanking actions on your 'economy' are more forgiving of a slow response.
-The games are very animation capped and many actions or events require the execution of an animation limiting speed further.
Strategy in the series is made up for though in some ways (though I argue not quite enough but that's a different topic):
-Cover, positioning on your troops is doubly important because of cover values that can give defensive bonuses to your troops. Many cover types are barriers though that will only protect from attacks at certain angles
-Small objects/barriers. DoW2/CoH features smaller sized barriers than possible in the craft game and units are at a smaller scale compared to maps allowing for more passageways and routes to take with cover. This opens the game up for more positioning and flanking.
-Fixed-Arc units. Dow features fixed arc firing units that require a setup time. This means that their use and strategy require forward thinking and placement. Meanwhile such units are quite vulnerable when their location is known.
-Suppression. Certain units will pin down enemy infantry rendering them almost completely unable to move allowing for traps to be executed with devastating effect if they work.
-Strong counter types. Vehicles are all but immune to small arms fire yet oh so vulnerable to anti-vehicle weapons.
-Rear armor. Tanks and other non-walker (think mechs) units take more damage from side/rear blasts and they have turn radius and acceleration speeds. That means their facing as well as actual position is relevant.
Overall DoW2/CoH can be a pretty powerful game of deception. Engaging in direct and large scale fights is very risky and costly. The much stronger tactic I'm finding is using deception and baiting to weaken the enemy and leverage that into the map control you need (Victory is gained through control of vital points rather than base destruction). One of my favorite examples is to have a fixed arc + suppressive fire unit setup around a 'corner' masked by fog of war then using a ranged unit (in DoW2 that ideally being a unit that can then teleport out of the way) to bait enemy units to enter the firing arc.
But that aside now hopefully everyone knows what DoW2/CoH are like and how they manage to reduce MUAPM and can talk about the strengths/pitfalls of their methods.
"Starcraft does NOT have an intentionally bad interface. The interface is indeed very simple and pretty much nothing is automated but that doesn't mean it's bad. It gives the player more options and it feels very raw, which is one of the feelings that makes Starcraft so great and Warcraft III so bad."
That has little to do with why SC is good and WC3 is bad. WC3 has one of the steepest slippery slopes, harshest countering on the strategy level, poorly thought out mechanics (creeping), unnecessary focus on the single hero unit, very limiting army size, and a rather flat economic model that doesn't favor expanding and also produces a comparatively well protected economy. THAT'S why WC3 is not a great competitive game while SC is.
APM: Tax or Understanding?
(Warning: this is long. Hopefully it's good enough to warrant its length)
(DISCLAIMER: This is not intended to be criticism of Starcraft 2. I don't know what the full list of features are in Starcraft 2 so I don't know what gameplay will really be like. Thus, it's kind of difficult to list problems with Starcraft 2's gameplay. This is simply intended to be commentary on APM.
This also draws on many other people's arguments. Hopefully this synthesis adds some value.)
Introduction
There are a group of people, like Sirlin, who are think Starcraft’s high APM requirement is simply a “tax to play” and does not further the goals of a strategy game. They argue that requiring some level of mechanics is fine, but there should be a bounded maximum useful APM on the order of roughly 250 APM. They support improvements in UI such as automine and MBS, arguing this reduces the magnitude of the APM tax.
I think this view misses some important points. First, it views APM more as an indicator of finger dexterity as opposed to recognition and fundamental understanding of game situations. Second, I think it's impossible to provide a cap on MUAPM without significantly changing the vision of Starcraft. Third, even "mindless" APM has a purpose: it adds a cost to micro and macro that creates a new resource and an interesting tradeoff. I'll touch on the Dune 2 argument here. Finally, I'll look at whether "mindless" APM adds to the fun of the game or not.
Before getting into my arguments, let's lay out a couple points of agreement. We could all agree that Starcraft is a game that, at its core, rewards good decisions on the use of limited resources. We could also agree that the vision of Starcraft is a fast-paced RTS game with large armies and a fine level of unit control, which distinguishes it from many other RTS games on the market. We could agree that the ultimate goal is making the game fun to play. Finally, we agree that "mindless" APM is stuff that wouldn't be required with a better UI, such as selecting buildings individually or ordering workers to minerals.
What is APM?
My first point is people like Sirlin fundamentally misunderstand what APM is. Sirlin's view is APM is a tax, or a skill that must be learned before you can even start to play the game, much like performing a special move in a fighting game. However, high APM on a keyboard is something almost everyone has. To use the popular example, most computer gamers can type on the order of 60 words per minute. At the standard 5 keystrokes per word, this translates to 300 APM. This shows that unlike making complex meaningful actions on a game controller, everyone can make complex meaningful actions with a keyboard and mouse.
SCC argues playing with a limited UI is like typing with an unresponsive keyboard, but this is a flawed analogy. The APM in Starcraft counts all those "extra" actions as part of APM. Thus, it's not that people have to hit more buttons to get the same APM, but people may need a higher APM to do the same actions.
A better analogy to illustrate the nature of APM would be writing a serious scholarly paper. Suppose a college student has to write a 1500-word essay on a subject he isn't totally familiar with. With an hour to go before the deadline, his roommate is aghast to find the student goofing off, not having started the paper at all. "Don't worry!" the student responds. "I can type 100 words per minute (that's 500 APM!!!), so divide 1500 words by 100 and I can finish this paper in 15 minutes. I can goof off for another 45 minutes even." Why is this line of thinking stupid? Because he's probably not going to be able to hit anything close to 100 WPM typing the paper. Why? Because he has to think about what he writes, which will slow him down. The professor, an expert who has written many papers on this subject, could probably finish this 1500-word paper in half an hour (50 WPM or 250 APM), but the student might require 4 hours (6.25 WPM or 31.25 APM). This analogy shows that the limit to APM is not how flexible your fingers are, but how fast you can react to the situation at hand.
Thus, having a high APM is not a physical achievement (I'd argue that being able to roll a joystick while pushing buttons on a controller is much more of a physical achievement), but rather a mental achievement. I'd be surprised if a computer gamer can't achieve 60 WPM typing on a keyboard. Rather, the APM requirement is a requirement on understanding game situations to the point that you can react without thinking about it. Top level Korean players have great APM because they don’t need to consciously think about the decisions they make anymore. They've practiced the situations hundreds of times and know them by heart.* It’s like a chessmaster who’s studied chess scenarios for a long time. They’ve seen this situation before, and they know exactly what they need to do. Such a requirement is common across all competitive games with a time element.
A fast reaction time in fighting games don't necessarily translate to an unbounded MUAPM because of issues with game design. In those games, there is only one "unit" to control, and the unit has moves that take a relatively long time to execute. Starcraft is fundamentally different, which brings me to my second point.
Is it possible to cap MUAPM?
Sirlin argues the game designers should somehow cap the MUAPM in Starcraft. However, there are good reasons to think this is not possible without drastically changing the vision of the game, i.e. reducing the fine level of control over units or implementing a hard APM cap. Unlike other games, the fast pace, large armies, and fine unit control of Starcraft means there's always something more you can do. Implement automine and MBS, and people will spend their extra APM to micro their units (i.e. focus fire) even in large battles, or to coordinate attacks on multiple areas of the map.
I see only three ways around this. First, you could significantly improve the AI so it takes away the need for all of this fine control. For example, you could have the computer focus fire intelligently. However, this takes away a lot of depth in the game. Second, you could move away from Starcraft's fundamental vision, either slowing the game down, reducing the number of units, or reducing the level of control you have over units (i.e. by using squads). Of course, this moves away from the vision of the game which is not desirable. Finally, you could impose a hard APM cap. This is kind of silly, because APM counts selecting units as an action. So if you hit this APM cap, then you can't do anything, even select units? Such a cap certainly feels wrong in a RTS game.
Sirlin argues he could just argue for capping MUAPM without needing to support any specific implementation of this. I'd be inclined to agree, except he needs to give reasons why capping MUAPM would be feasible in an RTS game with Starcraft's vision. If it's impossible to cap MUAPM at a low level, then the whole issue of UI improvements and other gameplay-easing devices is simply an issue of shifting APM from one arena of the game to another. This leads to my third point (which relates to, but does not depend on, this point).
Is mindless APM worthless?
My third point is that what Sirlin calls “mindless APM" is not just a useless device to make the game harder. It actually has a purpose: it adds a "screen-time" cost to micro and macro, thus providing a trade-off between the two and increasing the depth of the game. Suppose you're playing Zerg against Protoss. This means that if you want to build more units, you're paying a cost of an x% chance your army will die from Psionic Storm as you're not paying attention to run them out of the area of effect. If you're busy microing your army, there's an x% chance you'll lose all your workers to a drop. One of the biggest reasons low level players have low APM in Starcraft is because they spend too much time watching battles. Higher level players know when they can safely stop watching a battle and return to their base to order the next wave of units.
The cost of watching your army would be preserved under automine and MBS, but the cost of building units will be significantly reduced. Thus, automine and MBS significantly reduce strategic decisions regarding the resource of "screen-time". This has several effects, such as putting a lot more emphasis on micro skill at the cost of macro skill. It also removes an interesting advantage to the defender (as they don't need to split their attention as far as an attacker) which can damp the positive feedback of an advantage. Perhaps I lack imagination, but it's hard to replicate this effect of mindless APM.
This also shows why the Dune 2 analogy is flawed. Some people argue that if a difficult UI is a good thing, why not use Dune 2's interface, which makes the selection of multiple units impossible? If we look at it in terms of costs and resources, the answer becomes clear. Dune 2’s interface also imposes a cost on certain actions, in this case attacking. For Dune 2, its interface makes the cost of attacking too high. On the other hand, it's a point of controversy whether Starcraft's UI makes the cost of certain actions, like building an army, too high. Many would argue the cost is at a really good level, and automine and MBS would upset that level. They think this balance between micro and macro and the frantic pace makes the game fun. This brings us to my last point.
Is it fun?
For games, the ultimate standard is fun. We play games for fun, and it's argued that fun is just as important a standard in competitive games as competitiveness is**. Is the mindless APM requirement fun? For some people, yes. They enjoy the frantic pace of the game. They enjoy the adrenaline rush from having to act as fast as they possibly can. People also enjoy the extra layer of strategy entailed by the requirement to move your screen away from your army to produce units.
Of course, this is all controversial. Some people don't like the high or unbounded useful APM limit. Who's right? It's difficult to say which of these value systems is right or wrong. It's up to Blizzard to decide which group to appeal to in what amount.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I strongly disagree with the view that mindless APM is a useless tax to play that must be eradicated. First, if we view APM as a mental achievement as opposed to a physical achievement, it's not clear that an APM requirement is any different from the requirement in fighter games to understand and react to situations without having to think about it. The latter is certainly perfectly fine, so why not the former? Second, it's also not clear that it's possible to provide a bound to maximum useful APM in a game like Starcraft. If it's impossible, arguments to provide a cap are rather meaningless, and UI improvements should be viewed as shifting APM from one arena of the game to another. Third, mindless APM is not useless at all. Instead, it creates a "screen-time" resource that provides another layer of depth to the strategy game. This resource is (at least to my unimaginative brain) difficult to replicate in other ways. Finally, there's controversy over whether a high MUAPM makes the game more or less fun. There are good reasons why it may make the game more fun. Until we can agree that it makes the gameless fun, we shouldn't be so hasty to condemn it.
*See http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=78677 for how Koreans practice. That's how they're capable of hitting 400 APM.
**See http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=86580 for the fun vs. competitiveness argument.
Starcraft is well balanced with his "old-school" interface. Maybe the designers were lucky, but the interface interferes with everything in the game. If the game had multi base selection, maybe playing zerg would be much easier. If the high templars had autocast, zergs would try to send one zergling in front to make the high templars waste their mana. If you could select 40 units, it would be much easier to protoss to break a siege tank line. But when you have autocast and multibase selection, the game changes completely. All the APM the player was using to select groups, attack with each group and so on, will be used to other stuff, like expanding more, harassing more and so on. In the end, the player with high APM will still have some advantage(if the APM difference is big). That's why I think lowering APM will not change anything, but the inclusion of more hard counters(like goliaths>air units, or firebats>lings) and new and different kind of tactics(like the new units on SC2 who can climb the cliffs)
Players tend to focus on what he plays best. Boxer is GOD with his micromanagement, and he exploits it, trying to avoid late-game, doing early game harass and all. Iloveoov is GOD with is macromanagement, and he exploits it, turtling until mid/late-game. Boxer has low apm in comparison to iloveoov, that's why he focus his game in small groups and early harass. IMO this is a strategic decision based on your perception of your own skill level. If you suck at multitasking, just focus on small group battles and early harass.
And yes, you NEED the mechanic and dexterity to be successful in any real time game. I know a LOT of fighting games, what to do in what circunstances, but I'm bad with the controls. I can win some games using traps and strategies, but if I get someone with good dexterity I will be crushed. The same goes with every other game. You can win, you can have fun, but in progaming level, you NEED the dexterity.
APM depends on how fast you can think and anticipate certain situations. It's a game of mental tetris. You have a list of tasks that is continiously changing. You are executing tasks and they get removed and sometimes that means re-adding them to the bottom of your list (pylons/depots). You are changing priority of tasks continiously. While you execute the current task you have to think about those that are following, not just the one that is going to be your next task. You can only do one thing at a time. And multitasking means managing the tasks superbly. It's purely a mental skill.
And this becomes more obviously when the opponent does things you have to respond to. Your opponent may be doing a drop in your base that interrupts what you were doing completely. Then you have to give your attention to defence immediately. But while this is happening your opponent also becomes vulnerable. You just have to give some of your attention to that. And you have to keep managing your economy. Defending shoukdn't limit your growth just because you can't spend your attention to make it grow.
APM is required to be flexible, responsive, to be like water, etc. Don't let anyone tell you it's muscle memory, which is of course also a misnomer.
RTS games are about execution just like chess is about calculation(tactics). But both are called 'strategy games'. RTS games because of base management, resources and unit production. Chess because it's a game of mental skill, not one of luck. But both games also have strategy in the military sense of the world, which is a totally different meaning then from 'strategy game' or 'RTS'. But in both cases tactics totally dominant over the strategy.
Zelc uses a lot of words to say not much. I noticed he said I have a "fundamental misunderstanding" of APM. Ha.
He says APM isn't actually a tax, with a bunch flowery reason. But yes it really is. If I make a decision but the it takes more clicks to execute it that should be necessary with a good UI, then I must pay the tax of learning to do all those clicks as soon as possible. If I don't I am at a disadvantage against people who do. This really is a tax.
The next point is easiest to counter. It amounts to "Zelc cannot imagine a way to solve maximum useful APM." Thanks Zelc, but your inability to think of a solution is proof of nothing. This same argument was used by a religious scholar to counter the theory of evolution. The priest "could not imagine" that evolution could happen. If this thread were about finding solutions rather than claiming no solutions exist, then we'd have solutions.
Next, "we need mindless APM to split attention." I think what you mean to say is "we need to split attention." I actually disagree that you need it at all, but this is one point I'm willing to bend on and allow it as a skill to test. So ok, let's say we really do need that. Is APM the only possible solution? No it's not. "We need to split attention" does not logically imply "We need mndless APM tasks." There are other solutions to that problem.
Then there's the idea that the Dune 2 analogy is flawed because it puts a cost on attacking, as opposed to StarCraft that uses bad UI to put a cost on building. Do I really need to debunk this? First of all, this argument doesn't even address the point of the Dune 2 analogy at all. It happened to be about attacking but it just as easily could have been about base building, so you don't get a free pass to dismiss it just because of that. Second, and more fundamentally, the argument has a similar lack of vision and imagination as I pointed out in the last paragraph. Just because StarCraft is currently balanced around having a bad UI does not mean that we couldn't make a game just as good or better that's balanced around a good UI. The theoretical game I'm talking about doesn't make building units too powerful. Why not? Because of game balance, not because of artificial barriers in UI.
Finally, "mindless APM is fun." I think you're playing the wrong genre of game. If you had any sense as a strategy games player, you'd say "mindless APM is not fun." If you think it is fun, you should be playing Guitar Hero, DDR, or best of all: IIDX. Remember that I propose the game still be fast (that is the fun part, I get it), just not so fast that the "skill" test overly values click speed over decision-making. A fast game like that should be more fun to everyone except the few who are threatened by losing their current undeserved advantage of playing at 400APM.
"Thus, having a high APM is not a physical achievement (I'd argue that being able to roll a joystick while pushing buttons on a controller is much more of a physical achievement), but rather a mental achievement."
At some point APM crosses the threshold of being a mental achievement and gets into a physical achievement. This is especially true because of actions that require precise or quick mouse movements to keep the APM from slumping.
Anyone can hit 10 APM... 20 APM... 50 APM... 100 APM... probably even 200-250 APM with practice and knowledge of the game.
At some point though it crosses into a physical skill and limitations rather than mental. Going from 300 APM to 400 APM is the difference between acting every .2s and acting every .15s. When you cross barriers like that you're talking about getting players to play faster than the average reaction time (If the player has average reaction time technically they aren't processing the result of their first action by time they make the next one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_time ). If your human reaction time isn't a physical limitation I'm not really sure what is. I think it's safe to say that 300+ APM is crossing into physical limitations if it hasn't already done so.
Sirlin said: "If I make a decision but then it takes more clicks to execute it than should be necessary with a good UI"
So who decides what is necessary? I take it that you do.... You have given precious few example beyond auto-mining and MBS though, which are all kind of uninteresting examples at this stage. Despite the pathetic examples with Dune 2, I doubt many would think that the decision "storm drop his expo" should require one single click, set and forget. Am I to understand it that super fast hand speed giving a huge advantage in a combat or harass scenario is ok, but the same fast hands giving an advantage in a unit building scenario is a tax?
Btw, your notion that the biggest part of APM is clicking speed creates a very strange conversation, where people end up talking about very different things. Perhaps we should define APM properly before we decide what properties it should have in a game?
ZELC:
"To use the popular example, most computer gamers can type on the order of 60 words per minute. At the standard 5 keystrokes per word, this translates to 300 APM."
yeah except I don't necessarily keep up an AVERAGE of 60 words per minute while typing up a paper over the course of 45 minutes. these pros ON AVERAGE OVER THE WHOLE GAME hit numbers like 400 APM. At key points in the game their APM actually "spikes" to a higher number. and they do this with one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse, not two hands on the keyboard.
" This means that if you want to build more units, you're paying a cost of an x% chance your army will die from Psionic Storm as you're not paying attention to run them out of the area of effect. If you're busy microing your army, there's an x% chance you'll lose all your workers to a drop."
very true, there is a huge mind game in guessing where your opponent is looking at any given time.
"I can type 100 words per minute (that's 500 APM!!!), so divide 1500 words by 100 and I can finish this paper in 15 minutes. I can goof off for another 45 minutes even." Why is this line of thinking stupid? Because he's probably not going to be able to hit anything close to 100 WPM typing the paper. Why? Because he has to think about what he writes, which will slow him down. "
no. pro players practice their strategies over and over under the guidance of a coach and teammates.
THEY LITERALLY PRACTICE SO MUCH THEY SOMETIMES SUFFER SPINE AND ARM INJURIES FROM SITTING IN FRONT OF A COMPUTER AND PERFORMING THE SAME MOTIONS ALL DAY.
For your analogy to fit, we would need a student who has read the best possible paper, and practiced typing it over and over and over again all week, with a team of professors and students criticizing his mistakes.
In this situation, the typist obviously beats the professor because they both know exactly what to type, and the typist does it faster, while the professor makes typographical errors under time pressure and perhaps cannot even finish typing the paper in time. Even though the content of the paper is the thing being judged (and the speed to a lesser extent), that doesn't matter when everyone knows all the best papers down to the spelling and punctuation.
When you see a pro starcraft gamer play, you are seeing the best set of strategies that an entire team of people could come up with, tailored to beat his/her particular opponent on that day.
coaches for pro starcraft teams recruit based on dexterity and mechanical skill, claiming that strategy is easy to teach, but if you don't have the mechanics now, you probably never will.
Intervigilium:
"but the inclusion of more hard counters(like goliaths>air units, or firebats>lings) and new and different kind of tactics(like the new units on SC2 who can climb the cliffs)
entire armies that hard counter each other are not fun for players because one rock paper scissors decision will basically win you the game. It's also boring for spectators to see two players build up an army for five minutes and know exactly how the climatic battle will end just by looking at each player unit mix. Unit mix should affect the outcome of a battle, not decide it.
Sorry Sirlin, but when you say: "If I make a decision but the it takes more clicks to execute it that should be necessary with a good UI, then I must pay the tax of learning to do all those clicks as soon as possible", it happens in all games. Why people don't get a keyboard and configures the buttons to do hadoukens or any specials? Because it will dumb down the game. Sometimes the fun IS doing what it is hard to do at the right time.
Another thing I need to point is, Starcraft is a real TIME strategy. Time is a resource, just like vespene gas and minerals. You need to be efficient, and that counts for any RTS. If you can control your base, harass an expo, expand and attack in the frontline at the same time, you really deserve to be better than someone who can't keep up.
Sometimes people get amazed because we say "NaDa can do 450 APM woot", but have you ever seen a FPVOD of him? He gets that 450 APM just doing "12121212" a lot. You can win against him doing just 200 APM(if you play RTS on a regular basis, 200 APM is not that much).
Remember, RTS is NOT a fighting game. You don't have the frame rate limit, you don't have to care about splitting attention like in RTS, so it's more like rock-paper-scissors. In your book you say people can change the tide of a battle fighting in different positions at the same time. That's when higher APM is needed. Or maybe you can just attack-move and hope for the best...