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Longbow isn't real though. Neither is the setting of CoH, despite how much actual world history and influences it might mirror. It's all a narrative construct, and within that narrative construct we already have multiple organizations that fulfill the 'group that does questionable actions and slides along the scale of heroism' niche. Wyvern, Vanguard, the PPD, the Resistance, even Malta at the extreme end of the 'fully abandoned even the pretense of morality' spectrum (not that they had any to start with). I'm not opposed to an arc where Longbow takes accountability for their questionable agents and actions from prior content - that could actually be a fun way to progress the faction, honestly - but the catch that they absolutely can't be paragons of morality because 'those doesn't exist in the real world' is an odd restraint to keep in a game where superpowered weirdos in spandex have dance parties in interdimensional nightclubs.

Nebulous real-world influences aside, I wouldn't mind Longbow - and Ms. Liberty - to get some more earnest portrayal. In-fighting amongst the 'good guy' organizations is a classic plot device and can work, but CoX has plenty of those arcs at the moment. Let Longbow and Arachnos get back to the G.I. Joe vs Cobra arrangement that the game overall painted them with, and for the love of all things comic book don't have Libby do anything like The Widow in Red again. Given their edits to that arc HC seems pretty solidly conscious of that but man, it still irks me. Having the player character come in to solve the problem is necessary for there to be content, but the writing doesn't have to go out of its way to make the contact dangerously incompetent. Frankly that feels like it tracks for a lot of the issues players have with Longbow - most of them can be chalked up to poor writing or antithetical portrayal. Akin to how some comic characters act differently when appearing in other books (like Captain America in X-Men runs...). Longbow's actions in the Isles are emphasized as much more violent and brutish, but that's also from the perspective of a villain. It also could be that the Isles just does that to anyone who stays there long enough, though that's melding alignment restrictions and game mechanics into lore at that point. Tweaking their NPC comments to be aimed at the player villains/rogues or the villain groups of the Isles and explicitly not the citizens could help things. Heck, add in an arc where Longbow is legit helping the citizens of the Isles with supplies and safety against the villains and the player villain goes to shut that down. More independent, actually villainous Redside arcs and better Longbow portrayal all in one.

A Staff Assault set would be at least partially doable given Staff Fighting exists to pull melee powers from. The difficult part is the ranged options. A spear/staff throw using the Cimeroran Pilum power as a base could work for one, though there wouldn't be any rope or recall animation for it. Rope physics isn't something the game engine can even do AFAIK - it'd just look like a png image file stretched out and back (that's why the Demon Summoning whip animations are very specific power FXs and not actual weapons). Some Staff animations that launch kinetic or qi energy could fit the bill, though. Guarded Spin firing a targeted AoE bast, Serpent's Reach with an attached snipe attack. Add in an adjusted version of Staff Mastery more suited for Dominators and there's definitely something there.

Played it way back when it first launched as Dungeons and Dragons Online Stormreach. It was fun enough, especially if you enjoy the 3.5 edition of D&D. I remember the puzzles and mechanics of the dungeons being interesting and emphasizing exploration and investigation to find everything (though a lot of my memories are from the very early game). It seems they've gone into a F2P model with a cash shop and a number of expansions since then, so being locked out of content is something to keep in-mind - not that most live MMOs don't utilize that sort of arrangement these days.

The biggest hurdle with any implementation of a personal base per each individual character is that bases are loaded up every time someone enters them. They aren't persistent, they only exist when a character goes into them. That's why the Auction House and Architect Entertainment aren't accessible in bases. If they were, every time someone would use AH or AE in a base, the server would have to load the entire system of AE or AH solely for that specific instance of that specific base. Which would then end once everyone left and need to be reloaded again the next time. Personal bases for individual characters, even using those existing base restrictions, would potentially add a ton of instances that require constant loading and reloading. Literally an extra possible instance per every character that currently exists across all the servers and any future characters that get made. I'm not a hardware guy nor do I know much of anything about the specifics of HC's servers (or servers in-general, really) but that sounds like a lot. Not that every player would be on every character they have all at one time, of course, but the existing system of just making a single SG base for yourself and altinviting your other characters to it at least has more of a self-imposed cap on that. This isn't to say I'm not a fan if the idea - I think it'd be fun and as someone who likes making bases I'm down for anything that gives me more reason to use the editor - I just don't think it's likely unless some adjustments are made to how the servers would handle it. Alternately, maybe my understanding is outdated and the servers are robust enough for this to just work. HC did do some changes and upgrading a while back, after all.

That's all the difference needed though, since no one can actually prove any particular inspiration was taken in the creation of Manticore (or any other signature character). OP did this openly and in public, so for better or worse the arc will now always be 'My version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.' At that point what they change matters less when the GMs already know it's explicitly based on someone else's IP. No amount of separation negates that admission. A GM might be able to allow wiggle room with character that could possibly be inspired by Magneto, but there's less room to work with 'So I made Magneto, and Toad, and Quicksilver, and Blob, and then changed X, Y, and Z to not get in trouble with the rules.' OP might be a fantastic writer whose AE arc for this concept could be amazing - as an X-Men fan myself I probably would enjoy playing it! - but if HC is operating under enhanced scrutiny and wants to put a better foot forward regarding these things, at a certain point someone was going to catch their attention. I will totally agree with the prior point that such threads and characters should be handled similarly and fairly going forward, though. Which may very well just be 'Hey, don't state it outright and we're all golden.'

Also possible! The cape was the only costume piece of Statesman's I couldn't find in Titan Icon, so there's no telling where the live devs hid it. It did get put in when capes were brought into the game though, so maybe it's actually slotted in the right spot.

My immediate thought is that Homecoming didn't have a direct, public agreement with NCSoft before, though I have no idea how many threads like this have been made since the announcement. Homecoming has also had a steady influx of new accounts given the amount of 'X joined the community!' automated messages I've seen, so that's also more incentive to mention that this kind of stuff is not tolerated going forward versus any new players getting the idea that it's acceptable. As for the signature characters, while some might be similar to various other fictional characters - to the point where any possible inspiration may be obvious to anyone familiar with them - the game doesn't go around explicitly stapling that to them or use it to advertise their content. An argument could be made that Manticore took heavy inspiration from certain DC heroes but he doesn't say 'Hi I'm Manticore - think a fusion of Batman and Green Arrow!' when you click on him in-game. Which is the point where OP slipped up. Regardless of how divergent the AE arc became, how much the names/costumes/gender/etc. got shifted around, the core will now always be 'INSPIRED BY MARVEL'S IP (WHICH YOU CAN MAKE IN COH)' because they outright stated that's what they were doing.

With how various NPC costume pieces work, the shoulder section and the cape might very well be a single piece. Statesman's Tights option has its own texture pattern and chest emblem, so the cloak could be a chest or shoulder detail with a special cape attached.

It's not an issue of 'like vs exact copy.' It's the matter of 'players connecting their creations in-game to an outside IP in any fashion is not allowed.' So waving a flag, shouting that they're doing it, and asking other players to help them do it, is a pretty solid recipe for HC staff to bring down the generic bat (or at least motion to it with obvious intent). Privately knowing your character or AE arc is a homage to [insert piece of media here] is fine. Everyone takes inspiration, even the original dev team that made the game did. Publicly posting about the exact IP - to the point of listing specific copyrighted characters and asking for guidance on how they could be made via in-game systems - is asking for trouble. There's no plausibility in the statement of 'Hey, how do I make Magneto?'

What Glacier Peak said, but more specifically - posting an open written record asking other players to deliberately aid in skirting copyright on the official public forum for the game is bad practice. HC doesn't need to invite any problems that might screw with their agreement with NCSoft and intellectual property is a pretty big one, so the HC devs and GMs don't tolerate or encourage any behavior of that sort among the playerbase. Also, some folks need to watch The Wire and learn the proper time and place to take notes.

Given the Valentine's Day tip, it's probably in Sally & Lusca's too.

Also: We need a DJ Lusca! Possible nebulous canon of the Valentine's Day tips aside, with DJ Zero seemingly confirming the accuracy of this and the vigilante ending of the Shauna Braun arc explicitly involving Lusca eating a dude, the idea of Sally being a known danger to the waterways around Paragon City actually has more merit than I thought (even tweaking the interpretation to them eating the tons of fish in the holds rather than the sailors). Though now I want to know how exactly Sally wrote that. Did she use her teeth? Hold a jagged bit of wood or anchor with her flippers? And how did the giant lake monster learn English? Or the giant octopus, for that matter? And why is Sally's writing style that of a teenage valley girl?

Much as the badge mechanics are arranged purely by in-engine constraints (it's a defeat badge, so something must be defeated to track it), Sally's perception in-game is odd in-general. The idea of the lake monster somehow being seen as the real myth in a zone populated with murderous fey, pumpkin men, storm witches, and moss-covered reindeer-wookies all from Celtic mythology feels really strange. Making Sally's badge be reward for vicinity and keeping her an event spawn with a timed route seems like a solid solution. It'd nix any quibbles about hitting her, allow easier badge acquisition for players, and remove a bit of the weird idea that she's somehow the most unbelievable part of Croatoa. 'Yeah, that's Sally. We have weekly sighting excursions planned on the university campus. Sometimes heroes come by and give her snacks.' makes more sense than 'Oh man, you got a picture of the mysterious Sally? After punching her in the face? I'll add this to all the others photo evidence we have and still continue to not believe she exists.' Actually, thinking about that, just make it so using /e cameraphone or /e camera near her gives the badge. That feels like a fun alternative for folks who don't want to smack the peaceful dinosaur.

Agreed! Jon Favreau would also be a very good option, especially given how involved he already is with writing and being an executive producer. Even the weaker aspects of his Star Wars content (certain sections of The Mandalorian and a hefty chunk of The Book of Boba Fett) are solid enough foundations to keep building with and showed how willing he was to work with other directors and performers. He also seems to align with Filoni in the aptitude for bringing in older Expanded Universe content, which is also a major plus.

Speculation is that should she step down then Dave Filoni will take over, possibly with more involvement from Kevin Feige, too. Whether or not that's a good thing depends on personal assessment of the MCU and current Star Wars efforts, which is a pretty fair mixed bag by this point. Filoni certainly seems to capture a strong amount of Lucas' original spirit for the franchise though and at minimum those two wouldn't go into another film trilogy without some kind of overall outline. The Mandalorian movie will probably be the make or break starting off point.

I'd argue that's what the progression of the films have already done. Connery's Bond has scenes that absolutely wouldn't have flown with Brosnan's and Craig's, for example, and that's reflection of 'Well, it's been 30+ years since the first films were made and attitudes changed.' Been the same amount of time since Brosnan now, and likely Craig once Amazon's stuff ever comes out. Though having mentioned it, I wouldn't even mind them going back to the rougher content of Connery's Bond provided they actually contextualize it in the story. Have the woman Bond 'seduces' be in on it from the start, perhaps an informant, and they're both playing a role for the mission rather than Bond having his way with the umpteenth Bond girl because the script says they just can't resist him. Bonus points if it's also to play into the expectations of the antagonists. As far as Amazon changes go, I'm willing to wait and see. Fallout and Reacher are pretty solid, earnest adaptations that don't shy away from more intense content (variances in tone aside). That makes me doubt they'd full on neuter Bond, at least not unless they do Casino Royale again...

A well-adjusted person doesn't react to horrific acts of violence - especially ones they directly caused - with a witty one-liner. It makes him a fantastic spy and action movie protagonist in that he's capable of committing incredible violence when the situation calls for it in a way that entertains the audience, but it's pretty sociopathic. As is reckless behavior, disregard for authority, rampant sexual activity, lack of empathy, likeliness to abuse alcohol, and a disregard for social norms. A lot of which is heavily enabled by MI6 and his work as a spy, certainly, but it's still a pretty solid checklist for Bond's character (really only missing 'English accent, tuxedo, and gun'). Overall that feels like splitting hairs (and not from black to blonde, like when they went from Brosnan to Craig) but I will concede that - at least in-regard to Bond's personal outlook - the distinction is fair enough. He's not a member of the He-Man Woman-Haters Club or some raging incel, but he still has a pretty steady disregard for women, mostly seeing them as sex objects or distractions. Though, that being a reflection of Bond's own MI6 warped perceptions rather than a personal belief would be an interesting avenue to explore. Bond sees himself only as a 'useful weapon' so that's how he comes to view everyone else. The Craig era went into that - Bond himself being disposable for MI6 and what the work takes from the spies - but didn't really delve into that beyond 'And thinking about that makes him quit and retire. Again. It'll stick this time, we're sure.' I don't want them to change Bond or remove these things, I just want them to do more with those aspects by this point. Explore these things in the actual narrative, rather than just go through the motions or gloss them over.

Supposedly Lord Recluse's voice was done by Sean Michael Fish AKA Manticore from the original dev team - though whether this is just for the in-game monologue or also for the trailer I don't know for certain. It definitely sounds similar enough, though. The other guy is Foreshadow. He's got a very different outfit in-game than the one used in the trailer.

If you're in combat and it's gone so badly you're spamming at icons to stay alive to the point where you hit Secondary Mutation for a random 'Save Me!' hope... You were already going to be defeated. If you're hitting it in combat just because you forgot to use it at the start of a mission and get monkey'd, well...

I don't understand how portraying Bond accurately - and thusly having him be a misogynistic sociopath who does terribly violent things in the name of his country - counts as rewriting. That's not rewriting that's just who Bond is. A flawed, dynamic character who is fun to watch but also a vile person who does vile things. Also he's not a hero, he's just the protagonist. Fleming himself never even considered Bond a 'good guy.' He's explicitly a weapon of his government and a distilled product of his era. Which, if Amazon focused on that, could be an improvement. Having the franchise take a step back from modern day adaptations and portray Bond in the time he was written for seems like it'd play better, and would be a marked change from the Daniel Craig era besides. Plus we're far enough away from Austin Powers that more of the spy goofiness from the earlier films could be kept in as well.

Kallisti Wharf is part of Paragon, yeah. On the official map it's marked as #24, between Independence Port and Steel Canyon. The new drones are probably linked to whatever story content the HC devs are going to introduce for the zone (only reason I can imagine for a change both that minor and that deliberate) and the architecture was a 'Hey, we made all these new assets for Preatoria and we're making a new zone, why not use the new, fancy stuff?' rather than use a bunch of old textures and map assets they'd have to phase out/replace later anyway. If the Live game had kept going, I imagine most of the major Blueside zones would have been upscaled with newer assets by now to be like Kallisti - similar to what was done with the Atlas Park revamp.

Narrative context is not equivalent to player context. Running around on a casino themed map is not the same thing as a player character running around promoting a gambling site or real world casino. The 5th Column are Nazi terrorists but they aren't espousing that as a valid viewpoint the way allowing a Nazi terrorist player character would be. The Freakshow use Excelsior and the Trolls use Superadine as fictional drugs but that's not the same as a Scrapper with a bio that says they explicitly get their powers from cocaine. The Code of Conduct applies to player-made characters, text chat, and AE arcs precisely because the generation of all that is outside the direct control of the devs and some people are jackasses. It's a pretty standard 'You do X flavor of nonsense, you will get generic'd/banned' legal safeguard.

They would have to change power selections, because the way every powerset in this game works at least partially around core mechanics where character death is not a permanent impediment. The math behind every power is built at least somewhat around the core concept of defeat for player characters being a fleeing inconvenience. Heck, in the case of rez powers its explicitly the sole intention, and there's a lot of those in the game spread across many archetypes. Including Awaken inspirations that drop regardless of archetype while fighting mobs at levels 1 through 50. None of which will have any use or function whatsoever on a 'permadeath' experience. For a dedicated Hardcore server, an entire core dynamic of interacting with the game would either need to be removed or reworked entirely to do other things and everything else would need to be re-balanced around defeat being permanent, rather than defeat being a very real occurrence that is only marginally impactful. If none of the math changes and the game plays exactly as it does now just sans rezzes? Well, I hope folks like restarting from level 1. Get stomped by a giant monster? Start over. Get ganked by a mob you didn't see? Start over. If you run a taskforce set on the wrong difficulty? Start over. That's not even getting into endgame content like Dark Astoria, iTrials, or Preatoria. One good Rikti Invasion could end an entire Hardcore server with existing mechanics. That's doesn't seem like something a dev team could reliably put time and investment in the way Homecoming's servers have been built up. It's difficult to do major dev events when attending them possibly results in players losing their characters entirely. 'Oh hey, they spawned in Hamidon - now I'm dead and this character is gone.' I'm not saying that Hardcore doesn't take skill or require extra challenge or even that having a really exclusive badge celebrating that wouldn't be cool, it's just that CoX does not innately lend itself to working that way (nor, as I understand it, do many of the HC devs). With other games that have official hardcore support, like WoW, it works better because the mechanics are different and the community is populous enough (even nowadays) to fully support side endeavors like that. As a devil's advocate for this point - a Harddcore section of the HC forums, for folks who want to play on the existing servers this way? 1000% support that and think it should be added. The game does allow players to play this way currently (if mostly via honor system) and a dedicated forum section would make it easier for folks interested in doing so to engage with one another. As an experiment to gauge the actual viability of Hardcore CoX, that seems like the most plausible first step, anyway. Just seeing how many people would even try the game that way and engage with it. Even if it still resulted on no official support beyond a place for chatting and player events, it'd be a spot where those who do Hardcore characters could compare notes and strategies and that seems plenty fair. I can think of far, far worse forums to have among the CoX circle (like bringing PWNZ back...).

AE is the Nemesis system for CoX. As @Rudra said, the Champions one is literally the same arc over and over again - AE actually allows variety and bespoke content. It just requires that players write to get full use out of it. If you really want to be surprised by a custom Nemesis arc, commission someone to make an AE arc for you or join a roleplay supergroup.