Tashanin Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 (edited) Just finished the sacrifice fight that taught me something. Cheesing your way though things is what is expected. The first "Deplete the shields" fight. Spawn a Specter. Hide your warframe around a corner and just shoot him for the 1.5 seconds that you seem to have energy. Rise and repeat till you're told to do something else. You'll still die to the mobs abilities to hit you through walls and an AE that insta-gibs you, but that's how it was written. The second fight where you "already have your warframe", I tried to fight and stay alive, but the general time to death was approximately 6 seconds. Power lasted for the first 2 as the mob ran at me. Void dashed, but would die to the AoE or the floaty swords that would stun me till the mob could hit me once and kill me. I tried this over and over again and was getting quite frustrated. Did some research online about it and read a lot of "get better gear" and random strategies. So instead of getting angry about it. I thought through it. If the mob's shields don't replenish after I respawn. There is no penalty for death. Why SHOULD I move or even attempt to defend myself. Stand there, fire my newb mote till I run out of power (seemingly instantly). Get hit, respawn and do it again. After about 6 deaths of not moving an inch. I was able to finish the fight. No muss, no fuss. Just cheese your way though it. So for those that are frustrated or angry about this quest. Please note, you can cheese your way though it. There is no strategy or plan. You don't have to really do anything other than either distract the AI or stand there. Don't know why these fights were written in this way. This isn't meant to be inflammatory, but as an assistance. Edited January 21, 2019 by Tashanin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elementalos Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 8 hours ago, Tashanin said: Don't know why these fights were written in this way. I mean you've pretty much explained why. So if you're having trouble you can still brute force your way through it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teridax68 Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 I had a very similar experience with the Sacrifice, as on my first try I hadn't even gotten the Mote Amp, nor did I access any Magus arcanes or even put in that many points into Way-Bound Focus nodes (which I couldn't unbind as I hadn't capped any Teralysts yet). The entire fight consisted of finding some spot where Umbra couldn't reach me (in the first fight, this was a beam at the top of a Corpus room), and plinking his shields over a painfully long amount of time until I could move onto the next stage. What could've been a thrilling, tense fight was made tedious, yet also devoid of any real stakes, by a combination of unreasonable expectations, poor mechanics, and cheesy exploits: I was being presented with this quest that assumed I had given my Operator significant power-ups beforehand (I hadn't), and the Operator mechanics I was taught to use by The War Within, namely Void Mode and its associated invincibility and invisibility, were negated entirely by Umbra's Radial Javelin, which one-shotted me while I was meant to be invincible. None of this really mattered, though, because I had infinite respawns, and so could die non-stop with no negative consequences, and so win every fight out of sheer attrition. To be clear, I love the Sacrifice, as I think it's one of the most poignant and well-written pieces of storytelling in Warframe, but for all its high writing quality, it also has some pretty abysmal gameplay design. Fighting Umbra should have been a test of the Operator's skill, a cat-and-mouse game of evasion and well-timed attacks, and an epic, poetic fight between the two halves of the Tenno, a battle of opposite yet equal forces. In practice, though, the duel sections are a bellyflop, acting mainly as a gear check when the player at that point may not have even heard of the gear they were supposed to equip, and punishing the player for trying to use their Operator powers intelligently, as the game had taught them to in a previous quest. Even beyond this, Excal Umbra being able to stunlock the player with staggers on each melee attack just adds to the tedium, and while infinite Operator respawns remove all tension from the fight (DE needs to find a way to fix that), they're necessary to have for such cheesy combat to avoid making the player ragequit. Effectively, the Sacrifice is a perfect illustration of how Warframe has the potential to deliver epic combat and elevate the fantasy of the Tenno, yet falls short due to an overreliance on clunky, counterproductive systems. To me, it shows how Warframe cannot fine-tune its combat so long as it expects different players to have massive gaps in power among each other, nor can it claim to deliver a true learning curve when it cannot consistently teach players mechanics, or reward them for proper use (e.g. teaching the player to use Void Mode for invincibility, but then having an opponent ignore that invincibility for no real reason, in a mode specifically designed to feature the Operator in combat). As a quest, the Sacrifice has some brilliant ideas, but often does not pay sufficient attention to detail, which is why the player gets asked to look for specific pieces of grey fabric in a generally grey garden itself filled with random bits of grey cloth... at night. It's the reason why the Operator cannot be allowed to die, because the developers don't trust their game enough to attach any actual stakes to Operator combat (and they likely knew that people would absolutely hate the quest if Operator deaths were at all punishing). This, I think, should be the next level of polish DE needs to apply to their game, as I think we're all starting to realize that the devil is in the details, and that if Warframe got its details just right, it could raise itself to a whole new level of legendary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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