ZacKing

You're certainly welcome to agree or disagree. I was only pointing out that it's not up to you or me or anyone else to determine what is or isn't a good use of the volunteer time that the HC folk graciously give for us. You'll note that I didn't say expressly say anything about the idea being "worth their time". I'm only making a suggestion and leaving that decision up to HC to decide whether it's a good use of their time. If they feel it is, great. If not, that's fine too. Also, I'm not one of your kids or your pet dog, so no, I won't "drop it". If you want to share your thoughts and opinions, go right ahead. I certainly won't stop you.

Agreed and thank you. For starters, it isn't for you to decide what is or isn't a "waste of resources" here. That's for the HC team to decide what they want to work on. It's also not meant to completely prevent people from making trademark violations. If it helps alleviate some of the workload with regard to GMs getting flooded by tickets over this, then that's a good thing in my opinion. I mean, look at what the GMs have said about the process here. GMs have to spend time taking a look at the violation, sometimes needing to pass it up the chain for others to look at, and then even sometimes going through an appeal process. They also have to monitor that account to make sure the character isn't recreated once its been genericed. That seems like more a waste of GM time that can be lessened by adding a brief note about not copying existing characters into the costume editor. Tooltips on the loading screens aren't intrusive, neither would a brief sentence or two be intrusive in the editor. That isn't my experience at all. The overwhelming majority of players who I've PM'ed to let them know that copying Wolverine or The Hulk or whomever is against the rules here have replied and said thanks and that they genuinely didn't know. I can understand where they're coming from since most games have some sort of skins of Marvel or DC or whatever character freely available, so it's a surprise for players to not be allowed to do that kind of thing here. Like I said, most people I encounter genuinely don't know it's in the rules. Yeah, that's their fault for not reading it fully before agreeing to log in, but I also understand why most people don't take the time to read that kind of stuff. Have you ever read the complete terms and conditions for your phone provider or a warranty for a car or anything like that? There's a big difference between reading through multiple pages of text and a brief sentence or two telling people not to copy trademarked characters. There's people doing this anyway and you've missed the intended targets here. Again, no one is suggesting it's going to stop people from making clones completely, nor do I agree it would make things worse. This is more for the people who genuinely don't know about the rule and providing them a note or tooltip in the editor that reminds them not to copy existing characters by name, bio or costume.

No one is suggesting people should not be held accountable for violating the CoC and ToS they agree to by logging in. Where you're getting that from is beyond me. I agree, the onus is on the player to read the rules, however I can totally understand why most people don't read it. There is specific verbage in the CoC that talks about wasting volunteer time. If adding some instructions/clarification into the costume editor about not violating existing trademarks helps eliminate a good chunk of the trademark violation reports, that's freeing up volunteer time to do other things like helping out players with in-game bugs and issues.

You seem to have missed the part in my post where I specifically pointed out that the names were only part of it. Costumes and character bios were violations too. Again, it's not up to any of us to decide. It's HC's call. Making the parts in the CoC about not violating copyrights/trademarks somehow more prominent is what I was suggesting. I play mostly on Excelsior, Torchbearer and sometimes Everlasting. Mostly Excelsior. I see flagrant violations fairly regularly there. Spend some time in Atlas Park and they're cropping up. Thank you. At least someone got it! I think you might have something there. We do have loading screen tips... maybe it could work in the character creator. Not a bad idea at all.

That's wonderful, thank you. Still seem to be missing the point of the thread though. Insights into trademark law are totally irrelevant as the rules here are the rules here, so whatever armchair legal interpretation any one of us may make, they're ultimately irrelevant as what HC says goes. It's their server. I'm just wondering if there's a way to make this part of the CoC more visible / prominent so more people are aware of it.

Yes, it is there. That wasn't really the point though.

Ok so I didn't start the thread to belittle and bash people over their "lack of creativity and/or imagination." Let's please not turn it into that. If you want to look down your nose at others because their character(s) don't live up to your creativity standards, go right ahead. You do you. For the record, I don't care if people want to play Superman or Spider-Man or Wonder Woman or Batman or Iron Man or Howard the Duck. If playing your favorite character from your childhood brings back fond memories for you and makes you happy, go for it. More power to you. It's not my server though and not my decision to allow it. For better or for worse, we can't do that here and these are the rules we all have to agree to when we log in. I'm just saying I'm seeing a lot of it lately and tossing out the idea that maybe something could be done to make the "no trademarks" part of the CoC more visible to be more obvious. I'm sure there's people who generally don't know about it. It would suck for them to get invested in the game only to log in one day and be disappointed to see GenericSuperDude0034543 where their favorite character once was and quit the game over it.

For clarity as I think you might have misunderstood my post.

Not sure about anyone else, but I've been seeing a whole lot of people using trademarked names, words and costumes of late. For those who don't know, the words Jedi and Sith are trademarked by Lucasfilm/Disney, so no, despite protestations to the contrary, you can't have a character named Jedi Fred or Darth Bob in the game with a costume that's spot on for Obi Wan Kenobi or Darth Maul with a profile that talks about your prowess with the force. You also can't be dressed up like Batman or the Flash or Superman and say your SS/INV tank with a profile that mentions how you're from Krypton is "cosplaying so it's ok". I know hardly anyone reads the CoC or ToS when they agree to create an account and sign in. There's been a lot of this lately. I feel bad for the GMs who must be getting flooded with tickets over it. Maybe the parts about not violating copyrights and trademarks needs to be made more prominent?

Right. Moving toward the WoW model of must have tank/heal/DPS trinity to do anything. This would be sweet, although I suspect its way too much work to implement. Not saying HC couldn't do it, just that its a big project for a volunteer group.

Well no, there's no bad faith comparison being made. There's nothing wrong in pointing out the fact that your "you didn't try it, so you can't comment on it and your opinion doesn't matter" just doesn't work.

I'm not underestimating anything. I'm speaking from personal experience. It's not worth re-hashing in this thread, but you do have a lot of people here who throw hissy fit temper tantrums when someone questions them, questions numbers they provide or offers an opposing point of view that runs counter to their world view. I'm happy to send you specifics via PM.

Yeah, a lot of that in the Suggestions forum is noise, but I don't think that's what was meant. As far as the beta feedback, I've definitely seen well presented feedback that wasn't "you suck! this change sucks!" type feedback against changes that get hidden or shouted down or both. There's definitely a white knight brigade ready to pounce on anyone who disagrees with a particular change. More often than not and more and more recently, you're not able to even question other people. Honestly, it's like watching a cult sometimes, at least to me. It's HC's server so they can run it however they want, and I totally agree HC has done some fantastic stuff and very much appreciate all the time and effort they put into this game.

The recent CoT and Council revamps. The "early pain" comes from the lack of tools to counter their debuffs and status effects. Fighting Concil and CoT at lower levels in Perez or the Hollows or ToTing is a lot different than fighting them at level 45+ when you've got most of your powers and slots.

Telling someone you don't know and have no experience in dealing with that you don't believe what they're saying isn't necessarily a personal insult or character assassination, which is what an ad hominem is. It's being prudent in not taking the word of a stranger as fact. "Trust, but verify."

I very much agree with this, especially the first sentence. The direction of content being driven by a very select few seems to be inching more and more toward the WoW model where every team is a must-have tank/heal/support/damage teams to do anything. Not every player is following the latest meta to build purple IOed out to the gills characters with every last drop of resist/defense/DPS squeezed out of it. I can confidently say this because I team with a lot of random folks on PUGs and can see the lack of set bonuses on their characters. I'll also echo the sentiment that feedback is taken into consideration, but it does seem very, very, very heavily slanted toward feedback that's praising changes. More often than not, feedback that runs counter are shouted down and/or hidden from view. It's HC's server so they can do whatever they want, just providing an honest opinion on that.

As an option I don't see a problem with this. It's not a necessity, more like a nice to have.

Not sure that's the case. I don't think that the name thing was even a major driver behind developing the new engine. There were quite a lot of substantial technology upgrades made to the Cryptic engine, how names were handled was just one among them. As for social blowback, I can't really say what the result would be. I imagine there's some who will complain about it, but there's always someone complaining about something. People can already copy costumes and biographies from other players they like and I don't see anyone mentioning that. Personally, if someone has the same name as my characters, go for it. It doesn't take anything away from my enjoyment of the game. Others I'm sure will feel differently and that's fine. I very well could be wrong as its been a long while since I've read the HC folk posts on the topic, but as I remember it, there's not a great link between the tables for account info and character info on the individual shards. There would need to be all new tables built to accommodate that and to make it so that inactivity could be based on account activity instead of at the character level. It sounded to me like HC folk understand what would be required to do the kind of work to make names non-unique and are fully capable of doing it, but its more than they want to take on in their spare time given this is a volunteer effort. I don't blame them that at all as I get that this is a passion project for them. I'd rather they focus on what's fun for them to do so they don't get burned out.

It is kind of interesting to see how there's people here complaining that people with sub-level 50s doing the exact same thing are "name campers", but you doing this is ok and no one blinks and eye. I mean, the arguments being made in these threads is that you really aren't using your characters whereas someone else wanting the name might play it much more frequently, so why not release the names? Not saying you're doing anything wrong at all as I don't think you are, just commenting that the arguments being made for what is or isn't camping seems highly dependent on the person. It does seem like its always the other guy who's wrong.

Well I can only speak for myself, but you're in no danger of me ever naming a character "Bionic Flea". And even if every player in the game created a character named Bionic Flea, you'd still be you and there's still only one of you. Certainly not you, that's for sure. You'll also note I wasn't making demands that anything should or shouldn't get done, or trying to dictate what HC should be working on. So relax, I was commenting on a statement that didn't make sense in that a database wipe wouldn't be necessary. I understand this is a volunteer group working on a passion project and it's up to HC to decide what they want to work on. Feel free to dismount your high horse now.

I'm not sure that you'd need to wipe the database to do this? I get that the code is whacky, but this doesn't sound right. I don't think I've ever come across a situation where I had to wipe out all the data in a database to start over from scratch with something. I'm not a professional DBA, but I do know a thing or two about about SQL and databases. There's no way to run an update statement to prepend the global@ to the beginning of character names? You wouldn't be in the chat, unless you specifically wanted to see global names. In chat, your name would still be Bionic Flea. That's how it works in CO and STO. You wouldn't see the global in the name floating above your character either.

I'd like to ask a follow up question if I may. Allow me to preface it by saying very clearly this isn't intended as an insult to you or anyone else personally. I'd like to follow up on this comment - I'd like to know where I expressly said that bases and base building isn't important and that HC shouldn't care about it. I've never said that. I've said yes, it's a small community. I never said HC shouldn't care about it or ignore it. I just understand that it isn't a priority for them and that they should be the ones who decide what they want to work on in their spare time. I'll also say that as a builder myself - and yes, I am a builder - I don't feel attacked in the least that the base CRs position got eliminated. No, I don't see that as a personal insult by anyone at HC, nor do I see it as anyone from HC ignoring builders and bases or not caring. As I've said many times here, I understand this is a passion project run by a group of volunteers in their spare time. I thank them for that effort and appreciate all the work they've put into this project and all the work they continue to do. I may not agree with everything they do or everything they say, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate their hard work. I'd also like clarification as to what exactly constitutes being a "member of the community"? I've built bases, included them in your directory, posted photos of them and such in threads on the forums here and shared the code with others for them to use and enjoy at their leisure. I've spent a lot of time visiting bases others have built and enjoying exploring them. I'm working on several different base projects right now. Is that not good enough? If not, please let me know what the requirements are. Anyway, point taken. I'll steer clear of any of your posts from here on out. It seems like that's for the best. Good day to you. I wish you the best.

Thank your for clarifying. I can see how it might be taken that way. With that said, I tried several times to clarify my position, which I think you and everyone else knows already, and I think you know this isn't what I was suggesting. You'll note that I didn't say I was "glad" about any one person losing a position. I can't help it if that's how people felt or how they interpreted what I said, but that's more on them than it is on me. I think I've apologized and clarified my thoughts enough times to get that message across. But just in case that isn't clear, I'm sorry that people lost a title that meant something to them. I'm sorry people feel bad about it. All I'm suggesting is titles don't change who they are or what they can do or the positive impact they can have on the community. And as has been said already, the actions speak far louder than the titles ever will.

Ok so just for my future reference, I'd like to understand something - are we not allowed to offer differing opinions or perspectives on topics related to bases any longer? Maybe I'm misunderstanding you and I very well could be, and if that's the case I apologize. It seems to me that's the message we're being sent. To be crystal clear, I was not arguing. I was never arguing with you or anyone else. I was not personally insulting you or attacking you at any time. I was only asking questions and offering another perspective on the very thoughts and ideas for changes you were sharing. I provided examples to back up what I was suggesting. Are we no longer allowed to do that here? Maybe I'm wrong, but I had thought that's what discussion forums are for. We may not agree on the need for PR people or CRs or whatever you want to call the role. At least to me, the actions of others devoting their free time toward organizing events and helping other players out is what matters. Again, apologies if you feel like you've been insulted, attacked or berated in some way. That certainly wasn't the intent.

Right so, just to be perfectly clear, I am not attacking anyone nor is it my intent to insult anyone. I have a lot of respect for other players who dedicate their free time toward organizing events and doing things for other players. I've mentioned several of them by name here and thanked them for their generous help. I've also personally thanked @Dacy several times in this thread for all the effort put into doing things for the base community. As far as questioning numbers, I'm sorry but that's just what I do. Please don't take it personally, it's nothing against you personally. I don't take anyone at their word and I was raised to always get all the facts. It's nothing against you personally and I'm not saying you're lying or that you're a liar or anything the sort. A very wise man once said "I'd rather have questions that can't be answered than answers I can't question." I'm being honest here, but this kind of response from you is just a clear indication of what I said earlier in the thread in that anything that gets questioned gets labelled as "toxic" or "trolling" or "being argumentative." Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how it appears to me anyway. I can't help if it you see my disagreement over the need for CRs as a personal insult or an attack. That certainly isn't the case. I don't have "disdain" for the role, nor do I feel like you or anyone aren't worthy of it. I just don't see the role as necessary, sorry. I also don't see how not having a blue title anymore prevents you from continuing to be the kind, helpful person you have been in being generous with your time in working with and helping others. I hope you do get your title back. It seems like it's very important to you, so best of luck in that pursuit. I don't think you need it to do what you do, but go for it if that's what you want and will make you happy.