UberGuy

I don't mean to be snooty, but whoever was running TF's like that didn't know how to do it right. Both speeding past things you don't need to kill and staying together are possible. With some exceptions, I'd agree it's advisable.

The exceptions come in when you have competent players with either sufficiently survivable builds or adequate buffs that they can actually split up and remain effective. Being competent includes knowing when you can manage that and when it's going to lead to a lot of dead teammates.

A good example of when splitting up can save time? The Cyst caverns in the 1st mission of the ITF, on maps that branch in multiple directions. (I love the map that's a windy but non-branching path.) If you can have people go in the two or three branch directions all at the same time and not die (or spend all their time staying alive), it's a lot faster than the whole party staying clumped and backtracking to passages they didn't take before. But if splitting up is going to get you all dead, backtracking is faster. You just have to know what you're going to be capable of.

I don't know if that's the case. It says the target is "caster" and the taunt is applied to the target. So I read it as he's taunting himself for every ally in range. I have no idea what that would actually cause him to do.

But if that's wrong and he really is taunting the pylons, that probably makes sense as the way the devs get the pylons to apply the Drain power to him.

I speed run TFs, and it's my opinion that if you've never done a TF before, experiencing it for the first time on a speed run is absolutely sucktastic. That's one reason (among several) that if I am forming a speed TF, I always advertise it as such. You're a relatively new player, still getting to know the game. Getting on a TF and fighting stuff with a team makes complete sense in terms of having a good time and enjoying the game for its own sake.

So why do people speed TFs? Well, I think it's mostly a couple of things. Some of us have been here forever. There's no longer so much novelty in experiencing these TFs, and with a lot of them, many of us would just as soon get done with them and get back to something different, newer, etc. In my case, for example, I like fighting through stuff, but I honestly I prefer doing so solo a bit more than on a team. So it really works for me to hook up on a speed run, get the reward that's why I'm actually repeating the TF a zillion times in the first place (this has been in place since Issue 9, it's not just an Incarnate thing), and get back to what I enjoy a bit more.

It's also become something of a mini-game to me. Seeing how fast we can shave the time down to is fun to me in its own right now. We've thoroughly conquered actually completing the TF, so now it's a new self-imposed challenge - how fast can we complete it? There are other things we could do to challenge ourselves, like crank the difficulty up, but those all compete with getting the end rewards, and that doesn't sit as well with other folks.

So I see it as a combination of the ennui of long veteran players combined with the attachment of rewards to the completion of the TFs. But without those TF rewards, I am confident that not nearly as many TFs per day would actually be run.

Other than changes that would almost certainly be perceived as punitive by people who speed stuff today, I'm not really sure what can be done to keep folks who like to "smell the roses" (like you) from being edged out.

He will actually shoot players who wander too closely even with the pylons up. I had dug up that taunt power a while back, and to be honest, I can't reconcile it with how he actually behaves. Part of that may relate to the fact that it's a taunt by an ally, and I have no idea what that even does to the NPC AI.

I can say though that his willingness to shoot people who stray too close (even ones with no taunt auras, etc.) is one reason I like dragging the Rikti in early. He's usually much more interested in them, since they're actually attacking him or the mitos.

I quote: "general level of prices".

So what's the "general level of prices" in our economic system? If we want a concept of "general level of prices", should we consider the price of something that, say, we sold 1 of with equal weight to something we sold 1000 of in the same time period in the same economy? If the 1000 items cost 2x as much and the 1 item costs 100x as much, how much did the "general level of prices" change?

By the way, I never, ever said there wasn't inflation. In fact, I took pains to say several times that I thought there is inflation. What I gave was an example showing why that question of whether there's hyperinflation (for whatever worth there is in determining that) is not as easy as it might appear to be simply focusing on price increases comparatively low-volume items, which includes not only purples, but also some low-level recipes which are extremely common (and low price) at high levels.

And Hami attacks. He will fire on Rikti who have attacked him and/or Mitos instead of on players who venture close. I've even had him switch fire back to Rikti after taking a shot at me when I have (accidentally) shot him, usually due to queuing an attack just as a Mito dies.

I think that sums up my feelings on the matter nicely.

Does "all else being equal" mean powersets? Because if powersets are allowed to vary, the answer is going to depend a fair bit on the differences. Sure, some things are invariant, like the AT base HP and HP cap values. But what's more "valuable" to the team as a damage dealer: a MA/WP Scrapper or an Elec/Nin Stalker? What are we going to fight? What other damage dealers do we have?

At the end of the day, doesn't the real magnitude of the performance/"value" difference matter? Irrespective of how absolutely we can define the fact that, all other things being equal, one AT outperforms the other, how much difference does the performance gap really mean to most teams? For example, if it's within the noise of other factors usually outside our control, why even bother asking the question of which AT to choose?

My feeling is that some people always make a lot of noise about the very fact that a performance gap exists, and treat that as a reason to carry out acts of AT bias, with little or very narrow consideration of what that performance gap translates into on a practical team. I wonder if some folks don't think that doing things like this will help get an AT or powerset attention by the devs. If so, I think it's a (significant) overreaction, and mostly serves to screw over players who are actually willing to give the thing in question a whirl.