I'm not a speed player and never have been, but it would be wrong to compare them to Normal players.
Naturally because it's SPEED, the players who operate them servers will be a lot more fine tuned to startup, and will more than likely have better skills regarding sniping etc... They'll have to do it a lot more. However where I think speed players lack is determination, there's obviously a reason they started playing speed, so chances are they'll get sick of the pace of a normal world.
Likewise if you're comparing farming stats, me playing solo and hauling 185k in a day (for about 1000 plunders) is more impressive than many SLAP players (many of whom who have 2,3 and 4 people on an account - basically playing 24/7) who are plundering 2k+ times for not even the same reward... But I would say farming is one of the most important features, I don't recruit people to my tribe unless they had decent farming stats at the time, screw ODA/ODD that could just mean they've lost a load of troops...
Coming back to the original question though, spending pp to buy res is effectively cheating in my eyes, a great feature for people who love spending endless money on TW... But in reality just a scheme made to make more money for the company, and it actually works for them too aha, wonder how much revenue boosted since it was introduced.