Excraft

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.

I have a genuine question here. If you're having bad PUG experiences, then maybe try something different like teaming with people you already know? Or quitting the TF and forming one of your own? Joining random teams is a mixed bag and everyone has a different way of enjoying the game. If you're finding yourself on teams that aren't to your liking, then move on and create teams yourself. You can control what you do, you can't control what others do.

The bar is so low now with "official" Star Trek content that there's nowhere to go but up. I might give this game a try. I still play STO regularly, although admittedly not as much as I used to. Not sure I'd enjoy playing someone else other than a character of my own creation though.

I like the idea of adding a reminder/tooltip about this into the costume editor. If it helps get rid of a good amount of support tickets, that's a good thing.

Oh man, can you imagine? LOL! 🤣 4 Star Dr. Q will be epic.

Interesting response. Do you really need to try something in order to know you don't like it? If someone offered you a stew after you reading the menu and seeing the ingredients included like festering rotted roadkill and raw sewage, you'd need to try it first to know you don't like it? For the record here, I'm not equating any of the changes or additions to this game to rotting sewage.

I don't disagree that you see a lot of what you're describing in the Suggestions sub-forum and would agree a lot of it is just noise. What I was referring to earlier was specific to the BETA testing threads. Currently being the operative word in that sentence. I've no doubt there's more coming, unless you feel that MLTF, LRSF and such aren't going to get the same treatment.

Sure, by a very, very select few extreme edge cases. Based on what I see and the PUG teams I run on daily, the absolute overwhelming majority of players aren't anywhere near that level. Not even close. Content should never be balanced for what a tiny minority of players are capable of doing in my opinion. That's a bad design philosophy. You're just making things more tedious and annoying for the majority of your playerbase. What you're essentially arguing here is the old "I have a sandwich, so you can't be hungry" defense. As for incarnates, I personally have always agreed with the sentiment that there needs to be more specific incarnate level content - more story arcs and trials specifically designed for and balanced toward incarnate level characters. Council, CoT, Crey, Arachnos etc. in PI radio missions don't fall into that category. If they're too easy, that's because incarnate level characters have outgrown them, just like they've outgrown the content in Atlas Park or Mercy Island. I disagree and don't think any AT should be "pushed" in favor of another. One of the unique selling points of this game was that any AT is optional, not required, for a team. Things will absolutely always go better with a balanced team, which is more than enough incentive to take the time and form a well balanced team. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be what we're getting. "Pushing" specific ATs is being done at the expense of all other ATs and by neutering defense and resists with auto-hit, unresistable damage attacks, near insta-kill attacks, heavily scripted encounters that are very punishing of failure and the like. This is true some of the time, but based on my own experience here, it's not what happens the majority of the time. Feedback that has been well thought out and well presented against changes being made or against the direction of a change gets immediately shouted down by the white knight brigade to the point of getting lost in all the noise, getting outright hidden from view, or basically refuted with "it's not changing, so deal with it" type responses. I personally know quite a few players who won't BETA test or provide feedback any longer because of that. It's not that they expect their feedback to be acted on or changes reverted either. It just isn't worth it. Yes like ED, which nearly killed the game. One last thing that I'd like to clarify here as these forums are polluted with overly sensitive people who inject intent into posts that isn't there, I respect your point of view and appreciate that your experience is different than mine. I'm just offering what I see based on my experience. My disagreement with you and questioning your responses isn't a personal insult or attack.

I think you're grossly underestimating the amount of time, effort and money that would be required to "go ahead and make a better version" of the game. Again, this is a group of volunteers doing this in their spare time.

Why would they want to? I think you're forgetting this isn't anyone's full time job. These servers are run by volunteers in their spare time.

No, we don't. You'd be penalizing players for not sticking with a poorly run team. Just the other day, I joined a Posi 1 TF that was advertised as a speed run. The team organizer - who was only level 8 - refused to pass the star over to someone higher level, then decided to set the difficulty to +4 and refused to lower it. Several people quit the TF as it wasn't what was advertised. Your proposal would penalize them for that.

I would hope Jackson would not want to turn this into a trilogy either. You could be right about the appendices. I haven't read the appendices themselves in quite some time, so there very well could be more story in there to plumb. Even if there is a lot of room to work within, I'm certainly happy that its Peter Jackson and his team doing the story rather than the absolutely abysmal hacks over at Amazon.

Cautiously optimistic. I'm loving that WB is giving Amazon a huge middle finger for their abysmal steaming pile "The Rings of Power". I like that Jackson and co. are involved, but I do agree and share your concern about studio meddling in this one. As I recall, and granted I could be wrong as I read it a while ago, the whole story about the hunt for Gollum was condensed to a paragraph or two in the Council of Elrond. That seems like very little to stretch into a whole movie and you know the studio will want to make this a trilogy. Will be kind of hard to tie into the LoTR trilogy too given the wildly different timeframes you mentioned. Overall, looking forward to this.

Thank you for saying this. I'd like to add that it should be up to the HC folks to determine what is or isn't a waste of their time. They're smart people, they can make those decisions on their own.

Again, so what? The only reason they're taking donations is to cover the costs of running multiple servers which are needed to accommodate the number of players and spread the load out. Less players = less servers = less money needed. HC operated for years without taking any player donations. With no players, it's less of an expense which they could go back to paying out of their own pocket. Also, how many times has HC said they're never going to be a for-profit business? They're "not currently operating for-profit" because they don't want to and have said countless times they never will, especially now with the license agreement with NC Soft.

HC is not a commercial enterprise and it never will be. What difference would it make to the HC crew if HC lost a lot of players? This is a passion project run by a group of volunteers in their spare time. If they wanted to, they could block access to anyone and everyone except family and friends if they wanted to and go back to being an underground invite-only server. HC can continue to do what they're doing now with or without the rest of us here. They're under no obligation to any of us players nor are they beholden to any of us. Other servers are chugging away just fine with a limited player base as well. Losing players would be much more of a concern if this were a for-profit venture.

That's fine that you believe there are. I don't find any of the reasons given so far to be all that compelling. You're certainly entitled to your own opinion. I don't think this idea will ever be implemented nor am I demanding it be done, I just don't find it to be a bad idea. This excuse gets tossed around a lot and it never works. What is or isn't an "improvement" is highly subjective. There will never be universal agreement on changes made to the game. Some saw the addition of hard mode TFs as a much needed improvement whereas others saw it as pointless and a complete waste of development effort. Some see the revamps of hig level enemy groups as a good thing. Others are complaining about it. It's all subjective to the individual. As for being able to get global names already, yes you can do that, but it isn't necessarily easy or efficient. We can also send our alts recipes or salvage or inf by using in-game email too, but it would be much easier/efficient if we had global account storage accessible to all characters on an account, which would be an improvement.