Excraft

It makes him look even more fake and ridiculous. Brandon Routh and Henry Cavill both are in great shape too. Why this guy couldn't be bothered to hit the gym is anyone's guess.

Looking at this some more, I agree it looks like rubber muscle suit underneath. This looks terrible in my opinion.

That made sense when the game was a commercial, for profit venture. It is not for profit now and will never be for profit again. Hard NO from me on this terrible idea.

Some set photos posted here. Can't say the new costume looks good at all.

If you don't think that Leia or Padme were integral to the story in the original films, had very strong characterization and helped keep those "straight white guys" on task, I don't think you've seen the original films. "Inverting dynamics" has nothing to do with it. It's the crap writing that's ruining these franchises, not the race or gender of the protagonists.

This is the spin that studios have attempted to sell and it doesn't work. It's extremely transparent. Does anyone honestly believe there were no women, queer people or people of color who were and still are fans of the original Star Wars movies? Were there no women who could relate to Uhura, Leia, Sarah Conner, Ellen Ripley or the like? The whole "I don't have someone like me" line strains credibility. Various studios have kept trying this same "inclusivity" formula for years now and they've produced nothing but flop after flop after flop after flop. The second huge mistake the studios made is blaming the fans for not liking the garbage they are producing. That's not endearing any fan to them, regardless of race or color or gender.

If this is a concern for you, form your own teams and set expectations for everyone on the team on how you're going to run the team. Problem solved.

If not before. There are a great many people here who for the life of them can't understand how may others consider the "right/correct" leveling process a boring, repetitive slog.

I appreciate and respect your opinion on power leveling even though I fundamentally disagree with you on it, and you're missing a very important distinction. One thing I think important to remember is that these steps the LIVE Devs took were done for a LIVE game that was commercial product, where the objective was to keep customer playing and most importantly paying for as long as possible. HC is not a commercial venture and according to the repeated statements from HC will never ever be a commercial venture. Ever. Worrying about player retention isn't so relevant as it doesn't have the same meaning anymore. Worrying about theoretical newcomers PLing to 50 and getting bored then quitting no longer has the same relevance here as it did on when the game was live. It isn't up to us players to keep the game going, it's up to all the individuals here and on other servers graciously volunteering their precious free time to keep it going. If all us regular players go away, HC can just trim things down to a single server and carry on just as they had for years before the secret society server went public. HC could also decide tomorrow that they have had enough and shut everything down whether we like it or not. The HC folk are volunteers who can shut everything here down at any time for any reason they like. They are under no obligation to keep things running for us. I'm not at all suggesting they would do this, so please don't misconstrue what I'm saying here. They can do it. I'm not saying they will do it. As for people supposedly getting PLed to 50 and getting bored and quitting, let them. Chances are very good even if they had spent the extra day or two running through story content the "correct/righteous/approved" way and hit 50, chances are very good they'd still be bored at 50 and move on.

They are examples of self imposed caps though. Running a team of 8 on content that's designed for a full league is a self-imposed cap.

Nice work on this! I can see it being very helpful to those interested in maxing out a build and analyzing their DPS. With that said, I'd like to ask a couple of questions about this too. Please know I am not asking these with any sort of malice toward you, accusing you of anything or implying anything about you personally. My questions are in no way a condemnation of you personally or the work you have put into this. With that out of the way, my questions are; does this record and track other players on your team? If so, how can they opt out being recorded? The reason I ask is, I've seen these kinds of things being used to discriminate against other players and shame them in other games, most recently in STO. I'd really hate to see a useful tool such as this be used for that purpose here. Thanks.

Really? How do you explain posts like these? Hamidon is content designed for a full league, which is more than 8, so this group self-imposed a limit themselves. There are other posts like these around with groups of 8 completing iTrials.

I completely agree.

Dark Melee doesn't really have the "big hitters" like other sets have which take huge chunks of HP from NPCs with each hit. I always looked at it like this - sets like MA or SJ or EM are meant to kill stuff quickly. Dark Melee is meant to make them suffer while pommeling them to death.

Allowing people to make their own choices about what they want to do and how they'd like to play would be a great start in my opinion. Engaging with people to start a discussion with them about what it is they're after is a good idea too, not trying to force feed our way of thinking on them. I agree, you're right in assuming that these are more than likely PL'ed characters, however you also seem to be assuming that these are brand new accounts made by brand new players unfamiliar with the game and aren't alt accounts of a Vet who has already played the game for 20 years. Well said.

I really don't see the need for this to be honest. Isn't this what having a specific SG costume with SG logo and SG name above your character is meant to do? Those seem to be more than sufficient to show pride in your group.

I think there's a big difference between a link buried in paragraphs of text and a tooltip/message front and center on the character creator.

It wasn't an opinion, rather what a GM posted in this very thread.

No one is persecuting you. No one is trying to shut you down or tell you that you can't post your thoughts or that their opinion is more valid than yours. Just being honest, it seems very clear to me that you're the one trying to shout others down. I disagree. I think @PeregrineFalcon brought up a very strong argument for this idea in that it's a very clear sign that HC takes copyrights and trademarks seriously in the event of any potential lawsuits. That in addition to helping to take at least some of the work from trademark violation tickets off the GMs plates makes this worthwhile. Also, a brief sentence or two in the character creator doesn't need to be detailed and descriptive and provide exact, detailed instructions and examples of what is or isn't allowed. Simply stating that copying trademarked characters is not permitted and it is up to HC to determine is sufficient. The text could even include a link to the CoC if possible. I've had people say they didn't know about the no trademarks rule here as well. I don't know about you, but there are tons of games out there with skins for Marvel, DC, Disney, Image, Star Trek, Star Wars etc. freely available. Heck, even in STO there was a Ferengi in Q's Winter Wonderland that looked spot on for Yoda - including speech pattern - handing out lightsaber-like weapons.

HC has set the rules for access to their servers. What the existing laws say or don't say doesn't matter here. It's a private server with their own set of rules and terms that you must agree to abide by in order to access the service. Trademark issues here are never going to go to court because HC has final say on what is or isn't allowed. If you really want to be that guy who decides to take a trademark case for your character to court and incur all those legal fees and expenses for HC, good luck to you.

If you're willing to personally fork over the retainer fees for a legal team to handle whether or not a costume/name/bio combo here is or isn't a trademark violation, go for it. HC is more than capable of making that determination based on their judgement and what they will or will not allow on their servers.

Adding load screen tool tips reminding people to be kind to their fellow players isn't a bad idea either. Taking the "all or nothing" approach certainly isn't helping your case.

Here on the HC servers it is up to HC to decide what is or is not acceptable with regard to trademark or copyright violations.

When it comes to what is or isn't a trademark or copyright violation here, HC has the final say, so deeming someone innocent or not is up to them.

Folks, bickering and quibbling over what is or isn't a trademark violation or what is or isn't allowed isn't the point of the thread. It's none of our choice to make. The discussion is focused on whether or not adding a tooltip or note of some kind into the costume editor about not copying existing trademarked/copyrighted works would help alleviate these violations and help clear some tickets off the plates of our volunteer GMs. Spot on.