is all high level content as stupid as the ITF is now?

They could solve all speed run exploits by naking every mission in the game including all TFs and trials Defeat Alls on top of their other objectives.

Apart from street hunt 'Defeat X Mobs in Zone Y' type missions. Defeating all the mobs in a zone would take far too long.

Eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

How is a task force that can be run at 35 high level content?

Any task that gives a big reward at its completion is an invitation to get it over with as fast as possible so as to get that big reward.

The Katie Hannon TF was the first big example of that when the reward from all TFs were equal: One random Rare Recipe. And since KHTF was the easiest to speed through (before SpeEden was discovered), it was sped through.

Now that Merits and reward tables makes the big reward at the end proportional to the average length of time to do the TF, or, makes the reward random; well then, every TF or Trial is now a candidate for speeding.

That's a step up from just one being the targeted speed object, but it's still a bad reward mechanic. And that's not opinion. Objectively, holding out a big reward until final completion is a bad reward mechanic if you don't have ways to brake speeding through *all* of the TFs and Trials. Otherwise, human nature being what it is, players will rush to the biggest reward for the least time-effort.

I've been lobbying the Powers folks, and they've said they're mulling it over, to change the reward system by lowering the final reward and raising the drop rates during the tasks. But that hasn't happened yet except in small ways, such as the mid-trial rewards recently added to some of the iTrials.


But, if you don't want a Speed ITF, look for 'steamroll' or 'kill-all' or 'shardtastic' ITFs. The ITF is a drop bonanza because of all the Bosses and EBs and, at least on Virtue, there are still plenty of kill-all ITFs which are not speed versions.

It is not necessary or wise to always do every tf as fast or as slow as possible. I like tfs to be an efficient use of my time. I want the reward in a reasonable amount of time, I want to feel that my character contributed to the completion of the tf, and mostly I want to have some fun while doing it. For some people fun is RPing along with the story line, for others its seeing if they can take the hit from the exploding nictus on their controller without dying, and a ton of things in between. Sometimes we run speed tfs, sometimes we run kill all tfs, sometimes master runs, sometimes its a all specified AT tf, and sometimes its a normal run. Normal for me is work as a team, stealth and ATT where its helpful.

I remember when the ITF first came out and we went on our very first run, slowly going through each mish, completing everything. Four hours later we finished. Was it fun, yes. Do I want to sit on a TF for 4 hours? No. yes that was a long time, but it was a first run.
As everyone became familiar with the TF, as the devs fixed and players worked around the horrible lag, mapserver disconnecting issues. and as powers in the game changed ( incarnates) the ITF had the potential of getting faster. Normal runs are much faster than that now.

The devs recognized the average time it takes to complete a TF and reward merits are based on that amount of time. (when they started reward merits) The ITF rewards less merits than other longer tfs. Being the WST, gives good incentive to do it quickly.
I don't run all my characters through the WSTs, but if i did that would be 14 50s and probably 8 more above 35. That would be a lot of time, especially if they took more than 2 hours a piece.


My suggestion is similar to some others here. Ask the team leader if its a speed run or not. If you aren't interested in a speed run, find one that isn't, or start your own. There are plenty of people after the drops and xp, etc.

I know people have been doing speed TF's for as long as they can - but this was different.

In low level content someone might be able to stealth to the end of a mission, find a safe place and teleport the team, then attack the boss. But in this solo characters simply ignored the enemies they ran past and soloed a crystal while all of the surrounding enemies attacked them, ignored the enemies and ran to the next crystal. The enemies simply were not a challenge or a threat.

At the end of the ITF to get the 300 kills they flew to the towers and used ion judgement to simply wipe out hundreds of foes (presumably multiple ion judgement, but I don't know). Wiping out 300 ITF took maybe 1 minute.

There is a difference between doing at TF as fast as you can - which I am fine with - and the TF not presenting a challenge except how fast you can run or fly.

Oh.... those...
I have been on those teams before. They are a fly by the seat of your pants tf. Live if you can, if you die, hope you can rez yourself.
I remember the first time i was invited on one. I was told, if you don't think you can make it, just stand by the door. I have been on a few since, but not many. It's not my cup of tea.
Its not that the TF is not challenging. Its that they have built their characters to take the challenge, and probably used some other buffs and empowerments, to make themselves .virtually unstoppable. Another note, they can only aggro 16 (that is aggro cap isn't it?) at a time. So once they have the attention of 16, the others ignore them until one of the ones aggroed ones dies or finds another target.

I know that at least half to 3/4 of the ITF's I've seen advertized on Justice are what I call Shard/XP runs as opposed to Speed runs

It isn't just ITFs. I honestly haven't found a single STF, Dr. Kahn, LGTF, LRSF, or Barracuda that wasn't a skip-all-mobs speedrun since I started playing again a few months ago. The one LGTF I did go on that wasn't a "speed run" entailed one player stealthing the mission objective and everyone else doing a completely useless "lets clear all enemies" after the mission was long since finished. The team disbanded after the first mission due to a conflict of interests. In fact, the only high level TF I've seen that doesn't get speed runs is the ITF. And, it is advertised as not being a speedrun that really emphasizes the problem. All the other TFs and SFs I've mentioned above, they were never advertised as a speed run when I joined them. They were just implicitly speed runs, and I was the idiot in the group because I was the only one who didn't assume it was a speed run. Rushing through the entire meal and wolfing down only the necessary parts is the norm now.

At some point, a lot of people just quit enjoying these task forces. I prefer to steamroll run them myself: You kill what is in your way as you fight to your objective. That way it feels like my heroes are overcoming a mountain of dangerous opposition to save the day, instead of having to rush to the mission door before someone stealth finishes it, or getting ganked by swarms of enemies because two or three guys have run ahead and you're trying to catch up.

I make my characters for the sole purpose of actually playing my characters, and I don't get to do that on speed runs. I run different task forces because I want to use and fine-tune my usage of that character in a variety of (supposedly) challenging situations and circumstances. The sad part is that other players cannot grasp that concept when I tell them so.

I mean, there are plenty of benefits to steamrolling. Inf for one, experience for two, salvage for three, recipes for four, getting better with your toon for five, fun for six, ishards for seven... you know the drill. In the last steamroll ITF I ran I got a hecatomb recipe, and before that I got an apocalypse recipe. On another toon, when I ran a +4 ITF (ITF from HELL!), I got an unbreakable constraint recipe. I'm a billionaire now, and I didn't get that way by rushing through to get merits or a synthetic hami-o enhancement.

I also wish that, in response to becoming a level shifted incarnate with tier 4 powers in all slots, they would increase the difficulty of their missions instead of staying at +0/x0 and speed running for the rest of their life.

I hate speed runs. They're stupid. For some reason, I always wind up aggroing the mobs and dying an instant, grisly death.

Hmm how bout if you don't like how people are running their teams you start your own team. Sounds easy don't it.

It's interesting to me that the focus of this thread has landed solely on the fact that it was a "speed" run. Well I recently did my first ITF ever, and it wasn't a speed run at all. And afterwords I was left mystified as to why anyone thinks the ITF is even remotely fun. It gets lauded in these forums, left and right, as one of the most fun TFs in the game, irrespective of any rewards that may come with it, but I just don't get it. I found it to be a boring slogfest with everyone on the team dying over and over on nearly every mission. You might say, well, that team didn't know what it was doing, but my contention is that there should never be game content that is fun only after you've done it enough times to have mastered it (a common criticism I have towards the iTrials as well, btw). Because a lot of us will never bother with tedious content after the first time through it.