I really want to have soft shadows in my render, but using the soft size and samples in the lamp menu adds a lot of render time. Is there any way to get soft shadows without using this?
You can use spotlights with buffer shadows, that will give a soft look that’s very fast and noiseless.
The downside though is that the softness is constant because what’s actually happening is an image being generated and then filtered (so no sharp contact points if it’s soft enough), you would then need to work around via a grid of spotlamps in the shape of an area plane.
However, if you want, you can switch on over to Cycles and turn down the GI settings for a very fast render with soft and accurate shadows and more accurate area-lighting capabilities (using a mesh even if needed).
Thanks for the advice!
…No 
You can fake stuff all day, but not nice soft shadows
Moved from “General Forums > Blender and CG Discussions” to “Support > Lighting and Rendering”
I managed to solve this problem by applying a Gaussian Blur node to the shadows in the compositor.