I just watched some starcraft replay where commentators where saying "that's why starcraft is the fastest game on earth with 450 apm" (apm = actions per minute) and I got curious to find out the apm during qw games! is there any way to measure this? maybe something to add to ezquake, or in the match details after a game?

hm, interesting
maybe the server could count move keys, jump, attack, and impulses and then divide it by match length in minutes.. anything more it should count?

7.5 'actions' per second?

define action...

dunno why someone would messure APM in an ego shooter cause its completely irrelevant to gameplay...
an action is every click on the keyboard or mouse...and yes the pro starcraft players have 450 apm at peak times , not in average. theres alot key-spamming included ofcourse.
genereally its a pretty useless feature to include in qw. maybe someone should messure some 4on4 demos to give a general overview of APM in ego-shooters but not as a statistic to look at after games because that would make qw players look completely retarded

Starcraft looked pretty slow to me. First couple of minutes are just to create a base, even the fastest rush takes like 40-50 seconds I think.

The crazy amount of actions required for pro starcraft is due to the poor interface, requiring an action for the most mundane tasks. If you had to press a key in quake to pick up armors and other items, to climb up a step in a staircase, to manually reload each weapon through a series of clicks, to check your ammo, or your health, or to fire (1a2a3a anyone?) etc, then yeah you would have to do 450 actions per minute as well.

Supreme commander, for instance, has a much more modern interface (very simple to use, but there is nothing in it that you cannot do tactically that you can do in starcraft) -- the pro players display just as much skill (if not more, due to supcom having like 3x the units of starcraft, and so much counter-play) with a lot less APM. Scanning through multiple sectors quickly and orchestrating literally dozens battle groups, making up 500+ mobile units all told air land and sea, now becomes a possibility. The best players are the best because they have better strategic and tactical foresight, not because they spend 24 hours a day 7 days a week practicing 1a2a3a4a5a6a and clicking their workers to work. Seriously, starcraft is wonderful to watch, but the APM is pointless, and it would be just as wonderful (more so!) with a better interface

I disagree !phil. Bad interface is needed to let the players make a choice, to macro or micro for ex. That is very often what defines the better player.

In qw it is sometimes useful to do nothing (sit at mega on dm4 etc..). Also spamming enemy quad bind 6times. The APM -meter in qw could be an indicator of how much coffee you had during the day.

ot: what this forum needs is more MBS and auto-mining debates!!

The highest APM ever reached in QW was under the glory days of the Antiquad boys (hello Tuoppi!) on the finnespamcam.

hahah

Hehe, Ake I'm also positive that Tuoppi, Sandy & Harvester made some sort of world record on that.

I agree that there's no real use to measure this in QW since it's pointless. It's just out of curiosity I'd like to know about what APM we use, is it 100 or 300? I can't even guess...

Dunno, during a 20min 4on4 game there'll be plenty of relative inactivity (camping out of combat).
Phil makes a valid point, comparing APM between games is hard to justify because different games automate things in different ways. The general consensus in QW seems to have evolved over the years into a situation where we don't really view basic key pressing as "skills", I mean weapon scripts are accepted, conditional teambinds (if/else etc), gameclock etc. The one exception being movement scripts I suppose.

I'd say 200apm is a fair guess but obviously this depends a lot on the gametype. I did a very brief test of bunnyhopping and on flat ground with no obstacles its around 15 hops in 10 seconds. lets say each hop requires 3 actions (mouse, strafe, jump) then that equates to 270apm if maintained. Then again I'm not sure if you can even count mouse movement as an action, I mean where do you drawn the line, what counts as a single action?

In fact I think that's a fundamental problem when trying to compare different games, in an RTS like SC, mouse movements are kind of incorporated into the stats, because in order to perform the required actions, you have to move the mouse. You can't do it unless you mouse is over there. Whereas in a FPS like QW, nearly all actions are available to the player at all times regardless of mouse position. Hmm. Well, maybe not I guess, it's be pretty stupid to shoot if the enemy isn't lined up for the shot. I give up.

in my opinion APM could be the average speed and the number of shots between movements (no standing still shooting)
of course it would be cool if we could measure how good was the shot (excellent rail in q3 anyone?)

Isn't "excellent rail in q3" just getting 2 rail hits without missing any?

or landing your first rail when you pull out your railgun.

I think it would be interesting to see, but kind of useless in terms of gauging skill.

ehum I think he must be talking about something else Zalon/Gunjack
Excellent: 2 consecutive frags within 2 seconds
Impressive: 2 rail hits in a row

You play too much Q3 riosatiy

APM would be interesting when you start to consider team binds. How many do a qw play use during 10 seconds? Some will spam a lot of those, without a doubt a qw player can be in the same apm as a SC player but that is only during a tdm game I believe.

povdmm4, obliterating the strafekeys could give fairly high apm