Well if you can find me and don't mind my status quo speed of meh or mind my tanking ability I would love to assit you, in future endovers just drop me a "line", my preference are those from the Princess Bride or Star Wars 
grins
AV
Quote:
|
by Star Ranger 4 WIN LOSE OR DRAW, WE WILL FIGHT. WE ARE HEROES This is what we DO! |
Decide that this will be another day in which you Walk The Talk.
MA #14724 Operation: Discredit @American Valor
Sentinel Of Liberty SG
I respect your opinion rex. In the past few weeks I've been running more and more slower runs. Kinda fun yo! But I do enjoy speed tfs. Something about getting merits quickly is fun, but it is also fun to slow down and enjoy the Force of Task. But.....I say do the trials as quick as you can. Baf and Lam are the reason I ponder suicide.
yeah! Rex! yeah!!! 
Kill the enemy. Take their souls. Drink their blood.
30 minutes? I remember the days of 15 minute Eden runs =P
But still, same story with any speed runs. Do what the team wants...everyone has their own preference. Even if it is speed, it's not like it's hurting you by going faster. Plus some people have other things to do than play video games
I guess I was just missing the old days when a real savvy tanker by the name of Everything Nice would herd up the entire circle of skittles and a couple of us blasters would just take turns using our nukes to blow them up. Even back then, the colors, graphics were just ...amazing. This run was over before I could even see three colors.
But you're wrong, Camo. I may not have felt physical pain, but it did cause me some disappointment. I felt like my time was wasted, because I didn't get the experience I expected and had hoped for.
But, that's life in the big city. I suppose I should be overjoyed that Liberty had the population to be running not only the Eden trial, but there was an ITF and a BAF also forming at the same time. That's a lot of activity for non-prime time.
"Most people that have no idea what they are doing have no idea that they don't know what they are doing." - John Cleese
@Ukase
Speeds are great when you want to get stuff done and the person running them knows what they are doing. Jom springs to mind.
Speeds are horrible when the person running them thinks they know what they are doing. I've been on some "speeds" where it took as long as a normal run.
Eh. That's more or less why I don't do many TFs/SFs... I'm just not a big fan of speed runs, and that's about all anyone seems to want to do anymore. Even when they don't come right out and say "This is a speed run", the habits picked up from that style of play still seem to find their way in.
To each their own, I guess.
@Brightfires - @Talisander
That chick what plays the bird-things...
I'm going to take a slightly different approach here...
I'm all for taking time on TFs. Especially if I've never done them before. I actually read the fluff text and like the background stories that get put into this game. Beats constant storyline reboots and rehashes from other comic books. And, no deals with the devil...
However, there is something appealing to a speed run beyond the "getting things done" aspect. Speed runs require you to know your character inside and out. You have to know your limits and be willing to push right up against them. The ability to know a TF inside and out to the point where a normal operation turns into a carefully choreographed ballet makes the game fun for me. Kind of like watching Minority Report, when Tom Cruise is told exactly where to stand to avoid being detected or Paycheck when Ben Affleck has all the right tools to win exactly when he needs them.
Think about it like this: what would comics look like if the Justice League tried to stop a group of bank robbers? Not the super-powered variety. More like Skulls. It would be a total mismatch, right? Flash would disarm them before they drew their weapons. Batman and Wonder Woman would have them tied up before they could turn around. Superman would fly them out to the police before the bank tellers knew what happened. To the rest of the world, it would look incredibly fast because the heroes were too much for their opposition. Now extend that into the game. Thanks to Incarnate powers and IOs, we are now more than a match for many things in the game, especially the original content like Eden or the Sewer Trial. If you look at all the newer content, like the Incarnate Trials or the RWZ TFs, you'll notice they have been redesigned to compartmentalize the experience. No shortcuts, no sequence breaks. You do things the way the devs want in the order they want them done. Not any less fun, but designed to lessen the impact of speeding.
Before you pass final judgement on speedrunning, head over to http://tasvideos.org. That's the console game speedrunning archive. There, you can watch people using every available resource to beat NES games as fast as humanly possible. Watch those videos and ask yourself whether or not speeding can be fun.
Aerik,
I do appreciate your perspective. Thanks for the link.
I do enjoy a speed run - from time to time. I even like an almost speedy run from time to time.
But, for the most part, I prefer to do things at what I would call a normal pace.
There are different preferences for different folks.
Some of my toons I know very well. I know their strengths, and their weaknesses. I know that my blaster has no status protection. When solo, I can use my bitter freeze ray followed by freeze ray to get the jump on whatever mezzers there are. In a speed run, most teammates are scrambling around so fast that ol' Rex is on his own. When the Breakfrees run out, they're out, until I can combine three of some other kind of insp.
Other toons, I leveled to 50 back in 2005 or 2006. But, I only play them sporadically. This is yet another reason for me to pass on most speed runs.
"Most people that have no idea what they are doing have no idea that they don't know what they are doing." - John Cleese
@Ukase
I agree Ukaserex. Like you I understand why many play that way.. limited time to play, etc but I personally hate speed runs. Far too often the motivation has very little to do with time and much more to do with simply GREED. Aside from the Katy Hannon, the mother of all speed runs, prior to the merit system very few players sped through a TF or Trial. The main reason was .. they were mostly players within the range level of that TF and were there to earn xp. Obviously the more stuff you defeat the more you earn so people were happy to take their time.
NOW more than half the people you find on a TF or Trial are 50 levels only after the reward merits (to buy recipes or salvage), the weekly Notice of the Well (to slot their incarnate powers or convert into shards/threads), or the Incarnate component it awards (same reason as the NoTW). They don't care about xp because they don't need it and the faster they can get to the end of one TF or Trial the sooner they can be doing the next.
There is nothing horribly wrong with that its just not the way I enjoy playing the game. As long as a team leader advertises "Speed Run" when recruiting I have no issue .. I simply won't be contacting you to join your team. Now don't get me wrong I don't necessarily feel that every single mob on every single map UST be destroyed during any TF... After 3 straight mandatory KILL ALLs on Synapse followed by a Patrol and another Kill all I am more than happy to stealth through the missions we can to get done in less than 2 hours. And no one was happier to see them finally fix the Positron TF because that thing was almost as big a nightmare as the Doc Q TF in the Shadow Shard. But I have been on ITFs where the leader just assumed that everyone in game obviously loves SPEED RUNS and in mission two I found myself far behind the Brutes and Tank that were racing ahead and destoying rystal Shards.. leaving the rest us to die or clean up the ambushes they spawned. I don't think they realize that not everyone considers it a FUN experience to lay face down on the floor of a mission while the unsquishy toons do all the work.
While I have gotten numerous arguments when I have discussed this before I also can't see the advantage to rushing unless you simply don't have the time. A kill most TF allows players UNDER 50 to gain a lot of xp.. I have gotten as much as two levels out of a single ITF. It also means a lot more salvage and recipe drops including PURPLE Drops if you are high enough in level to obtain them.. one purple recipe can increase a players wealth by as much as 200, 300 or more million in INF. When the incarnate system began Shard drops were, and still are, based on number or defeats. Racing through an ITF to get to the end and get ONE component always seemed silly to me since I could get as many as 11 shards PLUS that component if we took our time and killed stuff instead of skipping over it. So I RACE through an ITF and get maybe 3-4 shards plus a component and then rush off to do another TF so I can get a 2nd component OR I take my time, in most cases 90 minutes or less, and walk out with that same comonent and enough shards to create a second.. not to mention all the added INF and recipe/salvage drops I got.
�We�re always the good guys. In D&D, we�re lawful good. In City of Heroes we�re the heroes. In Grand Theft Auto we pay the prostitutes promptly and never hit them with a bat.� � Leonard
�Those women are prostitutes? You said they were raising money for stem cell research!� � Sheldon
Last night, I did the Eden trial with a global buddy, a few others who I've teamed with before and some who I didn't know.
I've done this trial several times in the past, although most were pre-2006.
I've always enjoyed this trial. It was the first time that the game introduced allies to me in game. Slade, Gale, Quill and Tundra. NOTE: It was the first time I recall seeing an NPC as an ally. They might have been in the game before this trial, but I don't recall seeing them until this trial.
In any event, we used to follow a fairly straightforward method to succeed. Either defeat the first quarry or lead him into a hole, get through a couple of walls, collect some ambrosia, tackle some Lichens, clear a large bunch of skittles (a bunch of Devouring Earth critters) free some heroes and then tackle Titan.
This effort usually took us about 2 hours. This latest effort took less than an hour and I'm stunned. I feel cheated. I got twice the merits in half the time - but there was no "fun". I had 6 ambrosia and never even saw the titan. I was clearing the skittles from around his large post, and then the reward table popped up.
I never realized that there was a "speed" option for the eden trial.
I do understand the need for speed. Some folks want to be efficient and move on to the next challenge. Some just only have so much time before they have to log. I get that, I understand it, I really do. But what's the point of doing this brilliant trial in 30 minutes? Shouldn't there be a comment at some point, asking if folks are ready to tackle the big monster?
This speedy trend is taking some of my joy of this game away. When you're on the server, and you see all these folks that are on a mission map, and you're wondering why it's so hard to find a team - it could very well be because of instances like this one. You may have had absolutely nothing to do with someone's less than savory game experience - but because of it, I will likely solo more often because I can do so at my own pace, rather than at the pace of someone in a rush.
Mind you, in some cases, I don't mind a speed effort. A kill all ITF is going to be quite lengthy and likely dull if not teamed with some silly or funny people. But, c'mon- 20 minutes for a task force? That's not efficiency, that's a personality disorder.
Just my two cents, folks. Slow it down, and try to enjoy the game.
"Most people that have no idea what they are doing have no idea that they don't know what they are doing." - John Cleese
@Ukase