Player2

What even is the point of having altitis if you're going to control it?? Terrible.

As someone who "won the day" several times in a row a couple years back, I am happy the rep system is gone. Almost all I did was post costume designs and got plenty of likes for it, and I was beating out everyone. That's not normal, and it was very off-putting.

I'd love to see the jeweled chest piece and jeweled belt have the Spectrum treatment, with the jewel glowing not the belt or ring on the chest detail.

I remember Jack's musings about how he came to realize what fun was... playing some handheld video game while on a plane and being drawn into it more and more because he kept dying, so that meant that dying = fun and the COH had to scale back on what players could do to increase our fun. By the way, Jack was an idiot. But I guess you all knew that already, didn't you?

I'm convinced that they're trying to dominate the D&D brand by forcing people to play a certain way, unless they're willing to pay more, and cut back on as much competition as possible because they've gotten an over-inflated sense of importance of the brand name. As a side effect, they're driving people away and also building up their competition because most fans of the hobby couldn't give a rat's ass about the game system since WotC has changed it up five times since they've had it... how can you have brand loyalty when you change the product every so often just because they felt they couldn't sell enough books of the previous versions to justify maintaining it? So people will move to D&D clones like Pathfinder or who knows what else, especially with others now looking to develop their own original system to avoid the pitfalls of relying on another company's core product again.

I liked the Player's Option stuff, but my group at the time couldn't get on board with it.

I have yet to name the song of my symphony controller's attack chain.

I haven't really looked at it, but I've heard that Pathfinder 2e falls more in line with D&D5e. True story: Pathfinder 2e maintained the OGL in their books, but in their recent announcement of their own Open RPG license they stated that they did not need it and only kept it there to maintain it for people publishing OGL content for Pathfinder... and in the absence of WotC addressing the fan backlash for days, they jumped on the opportunity to say "We will always be here for you" to the fans of the hobby. WotC quickly came back with their backpedal shortly after, but too little too late.

The best part is that the OGL is completely unnecessary for anyone who wants to create D&D compatible content. The rules cannot be copyrighted, just the expressions (the specific writing of them), as well as any unique creations that may fall under copyright and trademark laws that were never released as open game content. The OGL was an easy to use thing for people to get on board publishing new content, giving them clearly defined rules and a system reference document to build off of. But the OGL is unnecessary and third party publishers could, can, and always WILL be able to "play in their sandbox for free" as long as they're mindful of the legal challenges and don't cross them. Correct on all counts. Fortunately, as I stated above, the OGL is not necessary for third party publishers to continue doing their thing. But there is now a new alternative with Paizo releasing their own Open RPG license and stating blatantly up front that it is irrevocable and their intent is to place stewardship of it into non-profit third party hands, guaranteeing that no one ever need worry about Hasbro and corporate greed if they don't mind adapting to the differences between Pathfinder and D&D. And given the outrage that WotC's OGL 1.1 sparked, I can believe that a lot of people will be moving away from D&D as a recognizable brand and either doing their own thing or jumping on board Paizo's ship. Either way, WotC shot themselves in the foot and it's going to take an awful lot for them to build up trust and goodwill in a community that feels betrayed. You are correct in that this was the intent of the original OGL when it was introduced, as confirmed by Ryan Dancey himself. However, whether or not WotC and Hasbro have the right to deauthorize the OGL is ultimately up to a court to decide. The OGL is indeed a work in progress, and was always presented as having the potential for changes. However, the original intent was that people could use earlier drafts of the OGL if changes introduced in later versions didn't suit them. But WotC comes along and capitalized on the wording of the previous version about "authorized versions" and attempted to deauthorize the 1.0a version. Considering the changes in the new version they presented, and the heavy-handed way they initially tried to gain conformity to it, it's no wonder that there was as much backlash as we saw (and continue to see). And I say good... let the backlash run wild. The OGL as it has been for two decades has been profitable for both WotC and third party publishers and benefits everyone by making more content available for everyone. Trying to change it isn't going to be well-received... ever... and fans of the game want the corporate overlords to know they won't take it lightly. All too true. It is ultimately up to a court to decide... if it comes to that. For now, that fate has been postponed by WotC backing off the OGL 1.1 changeover, not to mention the Paizo Open RPG license I mentioned above.

"This is just a fun server now." Is that supposed to be a criticism?

Land vehicles are more problematic because of the way the game treats movement. We would be able to strafe left and right without the wheels reacting accordingly, so... chances of a motorcycle happening are slim to none. I would love to see the motorcycle (used in one of the Thugs MM summons) without the wheels and given little rockets to explain the levitation, and we can have bikes like DC's Lobo or the 90s Avengers skycycles.

What you're referring to applies to trademarks, which must be actively defended or risk losing, while copyrights do not have such language in them but do expire after a certain amount of time. The need to actively defend trademarks is kind of why Marvel had to sue NCSoft back in the day. Basically, if one is aware (or can be presumed to be reasonably expected to be aware) of an infringement on a trademark and nothing is done about it, then the trademark is considered abandoned and up for grabs. Because COH had a fair bit of notoriety and Marvel made their own trademark infringing characters to prove it could be done, their lawyers felt like they had to take action or risk losing all rights associated with them. DC stood by and watched, probably waiting to see the outcome, but because there was an active effort to remove such infringing characters by NCSoft and Marvel's own efforts in creating such characters, it was all just dismissed. One could also voluntarily, intentionally abandon trademarks for whatever reasons. I can't remember the name of the company, but some skateboard merch company recently dropped their trademarked symbol that some felt looked too much like the old German iron cross due to negative associations with Nazis and the brand name. I also recall Marvel being relatively unhappy with the Punisher's skull logo being unofficially adopted by pro-gun people and deciding to stop using that symbol on the character... but I'm not sure if it's been officially abandoned (yet).

That's fair. I, too, dislike MMs and want them to suffer hardship. Nice to know the devs and I are on the same page with this one.

Why's it gotta be all beasts? Can we get a flight power that turns us into the hero/villain team transport vehicle? I mean, not technically transforming into vehicles but implying that the hero is inside piloting the vehicle, sort of like Skyraider bosses.

Brute: Of course we can get away with this. Hulk has been and always will be considered a brute. Corruptor: Only one interpretation?? One of the definitions for corrupt as a verb is "to alter for the worse" Let's corrupt a villain, thereby making the villain worse at being a villain... thus less villainous. This would be a good thing from a heroic point of view. That is an interpretation, so now we have at least 2 interpretations. I'm sure others can come up with more. Let's also not stress too hard on something being heroic. Remember that superhero comics are full of anti-hero characters like the Punisher. You know, someone whose actions might not at all be heroic but these unheroic actions are taken with goals in mind that would be similar to heroic ones (reduce/prevent crime). Remember, heroes could use guns and flames and radiation and other lethal attacks well before City of Villains was introduced, and we had people joking all the time about "arresting villains to death." Stalker: Stalking in your country is illegal? Way to focus on one aspect of that word. Tell me, is hunting in your country illegal? Do not hunters stalk their prey? If we bring animals into this, we can remove morality and legality from the word stalker altogether. Animals stalk prey. Many heroes are animal-themed. Stalking can be used in a variety of ways that would not be looked upon unfavorably: Crimestalker or Deathstalker. Try not to think of the names of the ATs so literally. They're creative words meant to describe a playstyle, not job descriptions or potentially criminal behaviors. It's like D&D classes... I feel like too many people take the classes by name too seriously. Like let's say I'm a fighter. Does that mean that a rogue who fights isn't a fighter because only fighters are fighters? No, it's a meta-term for the players to identify the mechanics of their chosen class. Everyone who isn't an outright pacifist is a fighter. Even a wizard who thwacks someone over the head with their staff is a fighter despite not having a single level of the fighter class. It's just words. We don't need to change them to fit a certain narrative.

Sometimes one can circumvent copyright and trademark with parody. However, parody can be shaky legal ground to stand on, and you have to be willing to make that stand. Artists and the companies they work for are usually better prepared to stand that ground than a game company is for a player's claim of parody. And when the game company is itself already on questionable legal ground, even less so.

If they're stealing from anyone, they're stealing from the original creators.

Trademark... not copyright. Trademark protects likenesses and made up words. Copyright is for story and original visual works. For example, Batman is a made up word using two common words mashed together. Batman's likeness is fairly well established. Making a character that looks like and has some bastardization of the name to get past the filter would be violations of his trademark appearance and name. If you started stealing Batman story ideas and putting them into AE, then you could be guilty of copyright infringement. For copyright to apply to likeness, it would have to be ripping off a specific image... like say the cover of a specific issue of Batman, attempting to reproduce the background elements and character pose and so on. But the copyright on each Batman comic book cover is its own thing, just all held by the same company. If you had a copyrighted comic book but no trademark on the characters on the cover, your cover could still be infringed if someone were trying to reproduce your art... but if someone took the untrademarked character from your copyrighted comic book cover and used it in a different way (different scene, pose, etc), then you've got no case. Oddly, CopyrightinfrigementMan actually looks a trademark infringement violation of Mad Magazine's Incredible Infringement Man. A case could probably be made by Mad Magazine even though the costume elements are different because it is thematically the same idea.

Exactly. Because people just want to recruit and go and not wait around for people that may or may not be looking to join by being picked up in the queue. Early on when HC brought COH back, I joined a number of DFBs this way and because everyone was starting the game from level 1 there was a lot more DFB activity. Now not as much.

The beauty of the DFB trial is that the content is universal and also slightly changes by alignment. This means that you can jump in the queue on red side and wait to be picked up, and you could find yourself on a team of heroes... but you'll still see things from your red side perspective with the trainers while the heroes will still see everything from their blue side perspective. Of course, I don't know if this is relevant because of playstyle with people either feeling the need to fill a full team before they start or to lock their lower number team in so that they won't pick up other individuals in the queue... so they can start right away instead of letting the system look for other people who are looking to join.

It's all smoke and mirrors.

I think it's worth a try.

The simple solution to this is to replace it with a new power that has all of the effects of Granite but doesn't replace your character model... or replaces it with different models depending on which "alternate animation" option you select.

For Psi (melee and blast and even mind control), I would like a "no animations" option where my character just stands there concentrating but not really looking like they're trying to do something... like it's all mental.

The winter event usually starts before winter officially does, and only lasts until the end of December... it's filled with Christmasy themes, but we're not supposed to call it the Christmas event because it's the Winter Event that doesn't last through winter.