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

Solution: Don't run speed trials. If you want some challenge, have your team dig their heels into the earth under the Bridge of Infinite Patrols and Lag. THAT'S fun and HELLA challenging, especially when lag gets involved.

In my experience, speed ITFs were only marginally faster than a kill-most or kill-all, and the potential rewards you'd get for defeating more enemies negates the time you might save.

I've never understood the fascination with trying to run something 5 or 10 minutes faster, especially the ITF.



Other TFs or trials might see a difference in speeding or not, but I think you should probably take each one as their own case. Some are worth speeding through and some aren't.

Ive run a few ITFs this week on Virtue with my main blaster Bentley Berkeley. From the OPs description it could of easily been one of my groups.

My typical ITF takes around 45 minutes, Ill take any AT lvl 35+ who wants to join.

SOP for each part is as follows.

Part 1: Secure the hostages. Once they are done we move on from the caves. WHat else would a hero do, waste time fighting or rescue the damsel?

Once OUtside Fly straight up, I really dont give a rats *** if the team follows or fights thier way up. I am securing the oracle and getting her to the altar asap.

Part2. Get it done ASAP. Keep moving, dont slow down for ambushes, and if one or more are capable of going off solo to speed it up all the better. That is real team work in my book.

Part 3: I designate a point tank for the team and go point blanker myself. General leap frog is the name of the game, when a generals number drops grab some sky and move on to the next.

Part 4: Rommy and Roofs. No time to waste, rommy is on the verge of gawdhood and even a second spent on needless battle while he lives risk more then the moment.

I only lead them. I never falter or fail them, and will take anyone willing with me.

Yet I can still recall those old days. When the ITF was brand spanking new, when you didnt always have enough 50s and had to work with lower lvl capped groups and no incarnate powers. For those this TF goes from fun to frustrating to say the least.

You see the game is at its best for all when you dont NEED anything but the company of others doing thier own thing to have fun to. If I need something from someone else besides just thier company then it goes from fun to responsable for others fun and that isnt really all that fun for anyone.

I don't even see how it doesn't make sense to some people to skip past the rabble and complete the objectives. Why should you kill every single armed-or-not roman in the place? All you're trying to do is free the sibyls, destroy the shadow cysts, assassinate the generals and stop Romulus. Have I ever read the mission text? Maybe I haven't! Just from the sound of those objectives you'd think they must be severely demoralizing at the least.

It is hard to relate to people who do not speed TFs. What's the point of doing them? Yeah experience is great but just by playing the game anymore you have a giant supply of experience boosters and whatnot, patrol experience, the fact that dying in this game means nothing... Leveling is easy. It isn't that speed TFs are necessarily hard, it's that they give you a goal to work towards rather than simply letting you sleepwalk your way through whatever it is you are doing. I find that the "feeling of team effort" in a ploughing TF is thoroughly explored about halfway through the first mission. You're going to start firing rain of arrows, she's going to run in and punch the meanest man in the face, he's going to stand in a corner with healing aura on autofire, et cetera.

On a speed TF, it's a race. Who among us can clear the boss room before everyone else has finished loading the mission? Who knows! It depends on your sense of direction, your rugged good looks, et cetera. The ITF is actually quite a poor example to hold up as "that stupid speedy thing," as Uberguy and others have said, since it adapts much more smoothly than most TFs to being speed-run.

Yeeeeeeeeeah the ITF is, probably, the best TF in the game. Many of the other TFs are not enjoyable and have absolutely ridiculous designs to them; those TFs are an embarrassment. So, the ITF is run a lot. Some teams like to plow through it and some do kill-alls. I did a kill-all earlier this week and it was fine.

I think the OP may want to actually FORM a team and declare it a kill-all or join one (check with the leader what type they're running).

Call me crazy but I think ITF speed runs are really boring. I'll do them every great once in a while but I would much prefer a sweep through (not necessarily a kill-all) because speed runs feel like mechanical subversion to me, the kind of thing a CPU will let you get away with that a real life GM would shut down pretty quickly. IMO just running past everything for the reward is like skipping the "game" portion of game. It's the fighting with the all the Romans and other enemies that I find enjoyable. The ability to just run past everything is IMO a bit of a weakness on the COH engine's part, and one reason I do think other MMOs are better able to create "dungeons." If only those games had our any-AT, exemplar/sidekick design philosophy, it's a weakness of CoH that would probably get me to leave the game. As always YMMV of course.

Incidentally, I like the element of the UG trial that has you kiting Desdemona around specifically because it makes the fight to the bosses more than just a speed through. If I didn't hate the boss enemies so much I would like this trial a lot (even more so if it were an 8 player TF instead of a trial).