The Sacrifice could probably do with some tuning

[Darthplagueis13]

I understand that at the point when the Sacrifice was released, there was a major veteran playerbase that had already built powerful amps and accumulated a lot of focus and that DE balanced the quest around those things.

But after watching a newbie play through the quest, specifically the sections that require Operator combat, I gotta say it's pretty rough around the edges. You can progress from the War Within to the Sacrifice pretty quickly, without making much Operator progress in the meantime (particularily as base focus lenses are painfully inefficient), and building an amp is a grindy affair at the best of times.

And the thing is, Umbra is way too powerful to deal with for a baby Tenno who hasn't got any focus ranks and arcanes and is running around with the mote amp. And yet, the game does literally nothing to stop you from going in just like that, making it a painful and frustrating and unfun fight, completely sucking the excitement out of the excellent writing because you always dread the next Umbra encounter.

I think one out of two things need to happen. Either:

 

1: Umbra needs to be nerfed a little, making it so it doesn't take literal minutes to shoot through his shields with the Mote amp, tuning down his damage and maybe stopping him from constantly inflicting slash procs on the Operator, especially as he can uniquely target and damage the Operator even when they're in void mode.

or

2: The quest needs some additional requirements, so you aren't still a 100% baby Tenno. This could include crafting at least one amp and spending some minimum amount of focus points.

[SpicyDinosaur]

Were amps even a thing when The Sacrifice was released? I don't remember mowing over things at the time, I had to work pretty hard to succeed, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

[emmyemi]

43 minutes ago, SpicyDinosaur said:

Were amps even a thing when The Sacrifice was released?

Yes they were. I was still a relatively new player at the time, so I remember spending WAY too long whittling down his shields with my default Mote Amp.

[Exxion]

Another option would be to buff the Mote. I know it's the worst amp on purpose, but it's currently meme levels of awful. It would still be the worst amp if half its stats were doubled. (I'm not suggesting it should actually be buffed that much, just saying how bad it is.)