Panzerwaffen

This. In almost 2 years of playing, I've never spent anywhere near 100K for common salvage, and never waited more than a few minutes to get it.

Dare I say it? Yes, I think I should.

You're doing it wrong, mate...

Just because you can't figure out how to bid on items without an obvious buyout price being available, doesn't mean the market sucks or it's not easy for most players to understand.

ARGH! How fracking blind can I be?!?

THANK YOU!!!!!

Team exactly as specified. 6 players, the minimum to start the ITF. No fillers.

Umm.. Yeah. That would've been an instakick for me.

I know we're sorta hammering you with this point, but what indication, if any, do you have that speed running TF's is "getting out of hand" or that the devs are even remotely concerned about it?

Or, is it simply that you are making a HUGE FREAKING ASSUMPTION here, based off of some thread you ran across on the forum? ETA: The Marketing forum of all places!

As Cat said, the forum does not represent the game. There are lots of topics commonly discussed here on the forum, that are generally way outside what the vast majority of players do. Soloing AV's being one, and solo running TF's being another.

Finally, you keep looking at faster than average completion times as some kind of trick or exploit. In my experience, what is much more commonly seen in-game is simply teams of good, solid players that steamroll everything in their path and quickly complete objectives. Perfect example, a couple friends and I ran the Silver Mantis SF the other day. The merit reward for that SF is 42 merits, so on average it should take just over 2 hours to complete. We ran with the minimum number of players to start, 4, and completed in 1:20. Nothing to brag about by any means, but a good solid time. We didn't cheat. We didn't use any exploits. It wasn't a "speed run". It was a relaxed and fun time for all of us. Can you seriously state that it is, in any way, "fair" for us to have our rewards reduced? Take a moment and really think about that before answering.

Yes, because changing the game makes more sense than lowering your difficulty setting if you find it too hard...

My understanding was that the arc you mentioned was given an incorrect (and excessive) merit value when merits were introduced, and that it was corrected after it was pointed out how skewed the rewards were by players.

And how is this any different than players employing various tactics to increase their rate of XP gain? Or influence/infamy gain? Or recipe drops? Should those types of rewards also be given a hard limit? Why not throttle all rewards, so no one is allowed to earn more than anyone else?

Apples & oranges. The vast majority of the AE fixes were to address exploits & loopholes such as low risk/high reward enemies, all boss farms, etc.

Once again, you're waving the boogieman of the devs nerfing merit rewards in response to speed runners when there is absolutely no indication that this is likely to happen. Merit rewards were introduced in Issue 13, which hit in December of 2008. That is over 15 months ago. Merit rewards have already been adjusted in response to datamining. The majority of them INCREASED.

Before merit rewards, when speed runners were concentrated solely on a very tiny handful of TF's, primarily Katie Hannon and the Eden trial, it was easy for the speed runners to seriously affect the average completion times. Now, those same relative number of speed runners are spreading their activities across a much wider variety of TF's, making it much more difficult for them to significantly skew the average.

Some reward oriented players prefer ITF or LGTF. Others prefer Positron or the Striga TF's. Most I have seen don't really care, and are happy to run any of them. What you have proposed is a solution in search of a problem...

Thanks for proving my point..

Or more accurately, you would try to do it, except you are smart enough to realize it would be an excruciatingly painful experience, and only ultimately result in failure.

Well said. Players can choose to play whatever kind of character they want. I have no problems with that. Do what is fun for you. But folks shouldn't get all self-righteous and defensive when someone doesn't want that kind of player on their team, especially for something like a TF, where generally 8 players will be together for an hour or two, or even more.

It's not just my expectations as a team leader that are a factor here. The expectations of the other players on the team need to be taken into consideration as well. If I'm forming a TF team, I want the team to have a fun & relaxing experience. The bubbler that doesn't bubble, or the LOLHealorz, or the petless MM, or the rad defender with no debuffs, is only an impediment to that goal.

Really? OK, since you like challenges, show us your Master ITF run with the following team makeup of concept & RP builds.

Team Leader: You, with whatever character you choose.
Brute: Any primary/SR secondary. Concept build that takes all attacks, and only the tier one SR power.
Defender: LOLHealorz. Empathy/Dark. Only heals from Empathy, no buffs. Plus medicine pool for extra healing goodness, only tier one Dark Blast, which can't be used since the player is RP'ing a pacifist.
Tank: Invulnerability/EM. Stamina-less build, so takes no toggle powers at all, only passive defense powers.
Masterminds (2): Petless Ninja/Pain.

I look forward to your results...

Cat beat me to it, but do you understand what the word "average" means?

Advantageous to one subset of players, and less to another group does not equal "fair" in my book.

Provide some examples of the devs nerfing TF merit rewards because of speed runs. To my knowledge they have not done so. Merit rewards were recently increased. ITF, probably one of the most speed run TF's out there, had its merit reward increased.

Even if this boogieman of speed runs causing nerfs became true, there are potentially much better ways to address it, rather than punish certain types of players for their playstyle.

Are you already playing on -1/x1 and finding that to be too difficult? Or is it that you are playing on an enhanced difficulty setting and finding that too hard, but don't want to lower it?

Because that sounds to me like you want the increased rewards of fighting larger spawns with even less risk that the current settings provide. Have you been a secret farmer all this time, Sam?

Sure you are. You want the rewards of fighting larger groups without the risk of running into +level enemies that the current system has.

Finally, on a side note, you have twice made unjustified comments accusing me of insulting you. I have not done so anywhere in this thread. If you can't handle even the simplest criticism, why bother posting at all?

You can't just pigeonhole playstyles into speedrunners vs. normal players. A good team will steamroll through mobs at a rapid pace, take down AV's quickly, etc. A sub-par team will struggle along, taking longer, even if both teams do the exact same things along the way. If the fast team completes the exact same objectives as the slow team, but in less time, why should their rewards be reduced?

I don't like being told how to play either, and I'm not trying to tell anyone else how to play. The only one that seems to be advocating that here, is the OP...

Really?

That sounds to me like you want the game to be made easier. Even though the devs have already given you the option to do so using the -1 level setting introduced in Issue 16...

The previous notoriety system also allowed for +level spawns, so it is, in fact, a longstanding game mechanic.

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Notoriety

"At the Heroic level, enemies will typically be equal to or a level above your character's level"
"At the Tenacious level, enemies will still typically be equal to or a level above your character's level"
"At the Rugged level, enemies will typically be one to two levels above your character's level"
"At the Unyielding level, enemies will typically be one to two levels above your character's level"
"At the Invincible level, enemies will typically be two to three levels above your character's level"

I never said anyone sucked. The game is already more than easy enough as it is. A little variety and some minor unpredictability is a good thing. A series of identical, cookie cutter spawns that never vary sounds mind-numbingly boring to me...

So, essentially you want to punish players for being good at the game? No thanks. A game where performance and achievement is punished out of some misguided sense of "fairness" is not a game I would want to be playing. What's next? Some players earn influence faster than others, so restrict their earning rate?

All players have equal opportunities to earn merits (or other rewards). How well they do so is based partly on their ability & skill, as it should be. If you can't perform at that level, then work at improving yourself, not at dragging others down to your level.

Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" (as Charles Darwin put it). They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,

1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.