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3 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

I am confused how increased Recovery/To-Hit/Accuracy/Recharge/Damage/Speed are things a group turns down, even if they do not strictly need them especially when you consider the buffs are going to be on 7 other people versus adding one more DPS.

 

That's the thing. Almost 0 speeders would turn that down. It's just wrong

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39 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

You can only hear the friends putting together the teams say, "We probably won't need your [Defender X] with this group. Bring [DPS Chatacter Y] instead? It'll make things go faster" so many times before you realize just how unwanted those support types are. I mean, my blaster or scrap probably wasn't exactly needed either, but it was still more valued taking up that spot on the team. 

 

Buffers and debuffers especially are almost always wanted on speedies I don't know what you guys are on about...

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I find this a really interesting topic and very important for the future growth of the game.  Personally I am exactly the opposite in that I prefer speeding and am the person who'll solo the mission objectives in a pug manti if nobody else is speeding. However if it's not specifically advertised as a speed I will ask if the leader is okay with speeding and won't do it if he says no. The issue comes when the objectives of the run are improvised on the fly. I've had times where I say I'll join if it's a badge run and then the leader just ignores it completely or the opposite where it suddenly becomes a badge run. Like people said before in this thread, the most important thing is advertising what you want in the LFG message or at least before starting the TF say the intended goal in team chat so people have the option to opt out.

 

There is a deeper discussion here though and that is the general difference in the mentality of speeding versus the casual style referred to in the OP. When I started speeding I did not intent to be a speedrunner; speedies are simply the vast majority of what you find in LFG and I took what I could get. When I did my first few MLTFs I had no idea what was going on. When people were killing the vines  around the Thorn tree I was killing monsters cause I had no idea what I was doing. However, when you run it for like the 10th time you start seeing the patterns and slowly get what you're supposed to do. Then you start asking people some stuff and you quickly start to know exactly what's going on.

 

This is where the main reason speedies are popular comes in. Once you know what to do, how to do it best and you know how to build your toon the game suddenly becomes very easy. Sure, there's plenty of people who are way better than me and when I play with them the difference to me is really obvious but we aren't talking about wiping 10 times versus 1 time here. We're talking about finishing the task force 2 minutes faster or reaching the end of the map 5 seconds faster. The general content remains really easy and speeding makes it more fun again.

 

Stuff like let's disable incarnates or set bonuses do mitigate this and that can be fun for a 1 off experience but this is not a solution. Handicapping people by taking away the awesome variety of options in slotting your build and using your incarnates is dumb as this is something that sets this game apart from so many MMOs and is why I like it in the first place. So many customization options. Just boosting enemy stats or debuffing your own is also subpar. For starters if you put an MLTF or RSF at +4 experienced speeders will still be able to finish it anyway just a little slower maybe. (although for a full team of speedsters it honestly doesn't matter it's more of a benchmark to see if your build is up to par)

 

What do I think the answer is? Exactly what the developers are doing. Aeon is a perfect step in the right direction. Adding new challenging mechanics in combination with enemy stat increases creates an interesting challenge that is more than "okay the monsters are so strong that I guess I just have to go a bit slower". CC was mentioned to be mostly useless which I don't entirely agree with but it certainly isn't mandatory or a great addition to the team. Now you can suddenly confuse brickers in Aeon to negate their explosion. It's a small thing but a good start if you ask me. Same with the beam that drags you to it and then you die because there's like 5 -res debuffs stacked on you with a bunch of enemies around you. Having tp here is suddenly very useful in combat. (Not CC I know but is in the same ballpark of different solutions to problems thrown at you) And the good thing is that in both of these situations you aren't required to have those powers, but they're nice to have and make it a lot easier. That's good game design if you ask me.

 

The new difficulties are also great in that they up the mechanics and enemy stats forcing even good teams to really start planning stuff out if they want to speed this (or just complete it even). And then you have lower difficulties for when you just wanna pug with strangers where both the enemies and their mechanics are weaker. I know that in Aeon the mechanics are still relatively basic but if you put that next to most other stuff in the game I can only say great job to everyone involved in making that content.