Owl's Talent, Ability, Skill, and Ascensions Descriptions make me wanna refund (the DLC)

[FoolJuice]

This character's abilities are so poorly (or at best, confusingly) worded that it's making my brain melt. I've followed reddit threads, reread all this stuff like 4 times, and FELT like I understand the character, only to get 1 Ascension that uses 5+ terms all with ASTRO at the front or throws in some new words like 'Slots' (does it mean slots as in Ascension level or slots as in the slots of the Astrohouse) and all of a sudden I don't understand anything.

I get that this character is all about probability mitigation and using Astroforecast to summon Astroaspects to fill the Astrohouse to cast the Falling Stars ability for better effects depending on the rarity of the Astroaspects in the Astrohouse, but why not just use less confusing terms?

Like, as an off-the-cuff example, Astroaspects could = Scroll Tokens, Astrohouse could = Ability Grid, and Astroforecast could equal = Summon Cards.

Why make it so I have to remember that house = three squares, forecast = card summon, and aspect = scroll icons in 3 squares? It feels almost designed to be confusing with them all sharing the 'Astro' prefix

This game has always had poor translation and confusing text but its been mostly non-offensive, but the owl in particular just straight up frustrates me to play even though apparently they're super strong because I feel like I'm fighting the game itself to understand the character I just paid money to play.

As a final example, lets talk about the auto-upgrading scrolls ability. So, Owl gets the ability to re-roll scrolls and auto-upgrade them and the number of scrolls of a certain rarity affects the probability of his Astroaspects, right?

I get that his ability basically 'labels' scrolls as different rarities without changing their effects, such as turning a Normal Scroll into a rare one automatically so that players Rare Astroaspects percentage increases (still following?). But, does this ability only upgrade them by one rarity total?

Can it make a Normal Scroll Legendary, or do you need to collect more Rare scrolls that auto-upgrade to Legendary to increase the Legendary Autoaspect? What do the three configurations for the auto upgrade ACTUALLY mean?

I get the CONCEPT of the character but man the actual execution is one of the most word soup confusing things i've ever interacted with and I just wish their English localization person (or team) was better.

[Oblique]

I just open discussions to see if I find a "explain owl to me like I'm five" then I read your post and I still don't get what owl does D=

[nul]

Normals can be upgraded into legendary. (I think, I only played this build on my first run, but there was a substantial enough of a difference in scroll tiers between my three settings)
The three configurations have priorities as follows:
Less normals:
1. Upgrade as many normals into rares as possible.
2. If there are no more normals left, upgrade rares into legendaries.

Most rares:
1. Upgrade as many normals into rares as possible.
2. NEVER upgrades a rare into legendary.

Most legendaries:
1. Upgrade as many rares into legendaries as possible.
2. Upgrade as many normal -> rare -> legendary as possible. (If I'm wrong, then this is just normal -> rare)

[Cheen Cheen]

i dont understand about the owl ascencion that "delete impure and replace them" its confusing as heck
what does it mean 100% chance probability of impure astro-what-athing
what is the bar that gives details about legendary scroll 10% epic 35% rare 58%

[Your cousin, Throckmorton]

Originally posted by Engas_Diam:

i dont understand about the owl ascencion that "delete impure and replace them" its confusing as heck
what does it mean 100% chance probability of impure astro-what-athing
what is the bar that gives details about legendary scroll 10% epic 35% rare 58%

The bottom of the screen, there are slots, they have scrolls in them after you cast your secondary. Get the same type and you get a better astrohouse, don't and get an impure astrohouse. The chances on the occult scroll page are the chances to get those scrolls in the slots. It's based off of the Occult scrolls that you have.

Also that one ascension that you talked about is his worst one by far.

[Intra]

Automatically deleting impure Astrohouse is a terrible ascension. Why would you even want that? They can be salvaged, especially with more slots!

[931numbers]

Originally posted by Intra:

Automatically deleting impure Astrohouse is a terrible ascension. Why would you even want that? They can be salvaged, especially with more slots!

You get compensated with a chance for weapon and skill damage bonuses per slot. That being said, the chance sucks early on so it's really more of a late-game thing when you've got a good chance for a pure Astrohouse, and can casually throw away the impure.

[Hjv]

Ye he seems to be overcomplicated but the terrible descriptions make it worse.

[Draco18s]

Originally posted by Intra:

Automatically deleting impure Astrohouse is a terrible ascension. Why would you even want that? They can be salvaged, especially with more slots!

Yeah that's the one ascension I do not understand why it exists. Sure there's a few things that combo off having your aspects cleared, but still, why?

Originally posted by TanktopNerd:

This character's abilities are so poorly (or at best, confusingly) worded that it's making my brain melt. I've followed reddit threads, reread all this stuff like 4 times, and FELT like I understand the character, only to get 1 Ascension that uses 5+ terms all with ASTRO at the front or throws in some new words like 'Slots' (does it mean slots as in Ascension level or slots as in the slots of the Astrohouse) and all of a sudden I don't understand anything.

You aren't wrong, but I feel that this is a first pass on translation as well as trying to cram too much into each description. Literally ignore anything that says that Normal is Normal, Rare is Rare, and Legendary is Legendary (like, seriously, we can figure that out ourselves).

You may be interested in my attempt at rewording the two abilities, although I haven't taken a stab at the ascensions. I dislike having "astro" in front of everything too, you're not alone.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1217060/discussions/0/3838801919850255530/#c3838801919850845202

Breaking down some of the terms:
Astrohouse: all the slots combined
Impure: the slots don't all match
Pure [quality]: the slots all match and are [quality]
Slots: The 3 to 5 squares at the bottom of the screen
Astroaspect: the quality of the thing that lives in a slot
Cleared: when all slots of the astrohouse are emptied simultaneously for any reason
Consumed: when a single slot is cleared for any reason

AS for Fate's Thread (the ascension that gets you more slots) just ignore everything about it upgrading aspects, as the exact probability of it doing 2 (instead of 1) or 3 (instead of 2) is unknown and the baseline value matches the number of bonus slots, so it may as well read, "Gain an extra slot which is always wild when using your primary." The contents DO matter for other things, but those always read as "more slots = better" anyway, so its not super relevant (would you rather have 3 slots with 10/15/20% bonus or 4 slots with 10/15/20% bonus?*)

*Another reason to WANT to keep an impure house over an empty one.

[Dick Nation]

The translation issues with this game bring me back to the 90s and some of the work we got from Japanese studios making their first forays into western releases, especially those with more complicated text information in them (a lot of RPGs, primarily). They really need to do better on these and set higher standards for content going forward; the whole game needs a retouch as it is from a more fluent translator. They've sold millions of copies, I'm sure they can afford paying for some contract work from a professional.

[Draco18s]

By the by, localization costs are on the order of 60 to 80 cents per word (not per language, but I don't have a handle on how many languages this figure was quoted for) and a localization team can do about 40,000 words per month (again, into however many different languages).