When teaching bronze and silver league players, Bonnell took a big picture approach. This past summer, he held "Destiny I," a crowd funded tournament that attracted many well-known StarCraft players.įor a time, he also offered tutoring to less experienced players at the rate of $100 an hour, though his teaching days have come to an end due to his own self-professed lack of patience. Though he enters tournaments occasionally, Bonnell's main interest now lies in organizing and running events. Today, Bonnell continues supports himself with streaming. Bonnell showcased his skills online, running a profitable live stream channel focused on his game of choice. Bonnell competed professionally for a time, even traveling to South Korea to gain additional training. Professional players can make a living off of such skills, and Steve Bonnell II, known to the StarCraft community as "Destiny," is one of these players. It's inconceivable to the average player, who couldn't perform ten random actions in a second, never mind ten purposeful ones. In these instances player hands become a blur, their keyboards emit a whirring hum – the result of multiple key presses that are indistinguishable from one another. And, during particularly intensive battles, their numbers can go up to 600. Watching professionals will quickly make you realize competitive e-sports players can perform 300 APM at any given time. Turn on the annual Major League Gaming tournaments and you see a different class of player. To an outside observer, that may seem dexterous enough – as it translates to roughly one or two clicks every second. As a struggling amateur, for example, I was able to perform 60 APM, occasionally reaching up to 100. It's a matter of nimble fingers and eye-hand coordination, and StarCraft 2 measures this physical component via actions per minute.Īctions per minute, or APM, is the measure of how many clicks and key presses a player can perform in sixty seconds. StarCraft forces players to multi-task quickly: controlling the army abroad, managing the mineral count back home, and scouting the enemy's base and operations. There is, however, a vast difference between knowing what to do and how to carry that strategy out effectively in real time. Strategies vary between each tier and depending on the faction players choose to master. Eventually, after hundreds of matches, amateur players will improve and advance on the ladder, albeit slowly. There's six leagues for amateur players: Bronze (13% of players), Silver (27%), Gold (33%), Platinum (15%), Diamond (11%), and Master (2%). And then, of course, there's the cheese – the ludicrous, yet powerful strategies that lead to an instant win or loss. Forget to build workers? You won't lose the match immediately, but you'll get destroyed once the game enters its middle phase. Forget to build anti-air defenses? A couple of Void Rays could take out your entire base. Forget to scan the battlefield? You could lose you entire Marine army to some burrowed Banelings. ![]() The learning curve can be incredibly unforgiving towards a beginner. One must be willing to 'play' for hours, days, and months – even years – to get better. The road to Grandmaster is not for the weak. The elite players, however, are the Grandmasters – a tiny, region-based pool of StarCraft 2 experts. There are seven ranked multiplayer leagues per region globally in StarCraft 2, a daunting number of leaderboards that welcome both the infrequent and the dedicated player. A game like StarCraft 2, popular amongst both casual strategy fans and professional gamers, showcases the large divide between playing a game for fun and for competition.
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