What is up with all the names?

[srmalloy]

22 minutes ago, JacksonRooks said:

This is a bootleg server of a 20 year old game. The devs could probably allow buck naked characters with the Superman symbol tattooed on their chests, and no one would care.

The game still belongs to NCsoft. Someone makes a direct and obvious clone of a DC or Marvel character, the company is made aware of it, and they decide to send a formal STOP THAT notice; it's going to go to NCsoft, because they hold the IP. Because NCsoft isn't running the game, they'll take the path of least resistance and issue C&D notices to all the rogue servers... and the game goes away, this time for good, except perhaps for tiny private servers kept carefully hidden.

[BastionWalls]

@GM Impervium, Thank you for the reply. I figured that there really couldn't be any "hard and fast" rules, so hopefully my "delightful homages" will be viewed as the creative tributes that they are intended by the rest of our community. 😁

[lemming]

I'm annoyed that Heltor Skeletor got generic'd, but it led to a different experience for the character.   He's still ain't no dancer.

[Mopery]

9 hours ago, JacksonRooks said:

"buck naked characters with the Superman symbol tattooed on their chests"

I take it you've seen me in AP before...

[dtjunkie]

So I have this toon called Hammer Corps. The idea was the toon was able to transform into history's greatest Hammers or Hammer users (both fictional and real). So far I have costumes for John Henry, Robert Baratheon, Thor (red-haired generic version), MC Hammer, Triple H, and Hank Aaron. I haven't played the toon much because I am worried that this wouldn't fit under fair use.

 

 

I also have another toon named Lords of Rock that is able manifest as members of the 27 Club (Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse)

 

 

Just curious if these would be okay, or if they are violations of the policy.

[Ironblade]

2 hours ago, dtjunkie said:

So I have this toon called Hammer Corps. The idea was the toon was able to transform into history's greatest Hammers or Hammer users (both fictional and real). So far I have costumes for John Henry, Robert Baratheon, Thor (red-haired generic version), MC Hammer, Triple H, and Hank Aaron. I haven't played the toon much because I am worried that this wouldn't fit under fair use.

 

I also have another toon named Lords of Rock that is able manifest as members of the 27 Club (Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse)

Obviously not a GM here, but that seems fine because you're not using the names and likenesses of actual people (which is prohibited).  If he looked like MC Hammer and had that name, that would break the rules.  But I've seen lots of characters that look like MC Hammer and have a name that makes some oblique reference.

Also, I'm old school, so I would have gone with Ivan 'The Polish Hammer' Putski for a pro wrestler.  🙂

 

As for the second one, that's pretty dark.  I had to look up '27 Club'.  Seems even less infringing since it has no one's name.

 

Edit:  The Hammer guy should have a dwarf outfit.  Lots of literary dwarves known for using hammers.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Ironblade

[Stormwalker]

3 hours ago, dtjunkie said:

So I have this toon called Hammer Corps. The idea was the toon was able to transform into history's greatest Hammers or Hammer users (both fictional and real). So far I have costumes for John Henry, Robert Baratheon, Thor (red-haired generic version), MC Hammer, Triple H, and Hank Aaron. I haven't played the toon much because I am worried that this wouldn't fit under fair use.

 

 

 

I just have to say here that I love this character concept.

 

And as the above poster said, I'm not a GM, but I don't think this would be a problem.

[biostem]

4 hours ago, dtjunkie said:

So I have this toon called Hammer Corps. The idea was the toon was able to transform into history's greatest Hammers or Hammer users (both fictional and real). So far I have costumes for John Henry, Robert Baratheon, Thor (red-haired generic version), MC Hammer, Triple H, and Hank Aaron. I haven't played the toon much because I am worried that this wouldn't fit under fair use.

If you're not using Marvel's depiction of Thor, then you should be alright.  Of course, you could report yourself to the GMs to see for sure...

[Rahabina]

My names are unique enough and I'm sure no one would want them anyways 💋

[Marshal_General]

The closest I come is my character, Cosplay Avenger, who wears outfits of her favorite comic book characters.

 

I figure it falls under the same rules as people who cosplay at conventions.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Marshal_General

[Herotu]

When I stumbled across this old game trailer on youtube, it reminded me of this thread.

 

[Grouchybeast]

Now I want to make Impostor Man, a villain with a selection of classic hero costumes.

Edited August 7, 2022 by Grouchybeast

[blue4333]

I'm glad that the Devs are looking at the Name Release Policy. I think people are running out of ideas for names, there's been an increase of characters that have adjectives and adverbs as names.

 

Followed by a copy-paste of the dictionary description in the character bio.

[Herotu]

15 hours ago, Krimson said:

 farming is an ends to a means, and not the means itself, and as such, I have no interest in inviting "TestBot 40k" or any other low-effort names. 

1. Eh? What's going on here?!
2. What's wrong with TestBot 40k? I like it.

[Snarky]

I have seen a few egregiously insulting names in the last few weeks.  I only log on two days a week now for SG events.  Almost every time we see something truly rancid.  Many times by an account with the same name.  Which I am sure gets banned   And they make a new acct.  wash rinse repeat.  Wackamole. Great name Wackamole.  Someone grab that

[BurtHutt]

On 7/20/2022 at 10:26 AM, TheZag said:

City of Heroes had legal troubles back during the retail run.  CoH won the suit but im sure the team here would prefer to avoid such issues.

 

An example would be Thor from mythology with red braided hair and Thor from the comic books with blond hair and all the other comic book features.  While it wouldnt be a violation to make Thor from mythology,  making Thor from the comics is so they blocked the name anyways just to be safe.

 

I have a character named Copyright Infringement Man (condensed to fit in 20 characters)  that has a single costume piece that would be attributed to Iron Man,  Captain America,  Wonder Woman,  Batman,  Aquaman,  Superman,  Star Wars and a few others all mashed into 1 costume.  But since no such character actually exists,  its not a violation.

 

I would encourage others to not purposefully make a character that could cause problems for the homecoming team.

Back in the day of Live, having the name Thor would've gotten you genericed. Even regular words like Apocalypse, Tombstone etc would have been genericed (even if there was absolutely no physical resemblance to the comic book character). I know this because I had both names and got them yanked away back on Live. I thought that was a bit much.

[High_Beam]

On 7/20/2022 at 6:40 PM, biostem said:

The first giveaway, IMO, is if the name is just a poor use of letter substitution or throwing in some extraneous characters or spaces to get the name, ("Kaptain 4m3r1c4", etc).

They should be banned for using that much substitution in the first place.  It's butt annoying.

[Marshal_General]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

I have seen a few egregiously insulting names in the last few weeks.  I only log on two days a week now for SG events.  Almost every time we see something truly rancid.  Many times by an account with the same name.  Which I am sure gets banned   And they make a new acct.  wash rinse repeat.  Wackamole. Great name Wackamole.  Someone grab that

Sorry, but under the rules of the Mole Protection Act, the term wackamole has been deemed offensive to moles and further more shall not be used under the terms of the afore mentioned Act.

[Yomo Kimyata]

5 hours ago, Herotu said:

1.  
2. What's wrong with TestBot 40k? I like it.

 

That's way too far to run.

[Herotu]

On 7/20/2022 at 11:40 PM, biostem said:

"Kaptain 4m3r1c4", etc

Legitimate lore-friendly Freak name.

[srmalloy]

On 8/7/2022 at 11:18 AM, Krimson said:

Monster Hunters: Blue Idoru (Main, Elec/Kin Corruptor),

Reading that, I had a quick flash of a minimum-height MA/SR Scrapper, 'Odori Ebi'... just to see how long it takes people to get the joke. The farthest I've gone for a deliberately obscure character name, though, is Xiao Guo, an Earth/Storm Controller, whose name is a multi-level indirection.

[Sanguinesun]

On 8/8/2022 at 3:18 AM, Krimson said:

On the other end of the scale you have players with names like "Generic name until I think of one" and of course, they are asking to be farmed. I'm sorry but, farming is an ends to a means, and not the means itself, and as such, I have no interest in inviting "TestBot 40k" or any other low-effort names. 

 

 

 

You make way too many assumptions there....

Edited August 9, 2022 by Sanguinesun

[Snarky]

On 8/8/2022 at 6:06 AM, Marshal_General said:

Sorry, but under the rules of the Mole Protection Act, the term wackamole has been deemed offensive to moles and further more shall not be used under the terms of the afore mentioned Act.

Reminds me of an old gaming group.  Anytime someone mentioned “crazy as a shithouse rat” the shithouse rat anti defamation league sprang into action

[UltraAlt]

On 7/19/2022 at 8:13 PM, Techwright said:

Hate bringing this up, but I have a couple of questions:

 

1. Did I miss a permissions change?  I'm seeing more flat-out copycats of licensed characters than ever before.  I'm not talking homages that have different names or altered looks, but still give you the "flavor" of the character emulated.  I'm talking straight out lifts from games and comic pages: names, powers, costumes, even the occasional biography.  Tonight, just moving from Ms Liberty to the P2W vendor I encountered 3 of them.  Last I knew, the CoC read:

 

Copyright Policy

Use of copyrighted characters and content without permission is not permitted when creating characters or Architect content. This includes characters and stories from intellectual property belonging to any IP that is not City of Heroes.

 

2. Is it considered a name violation if it reflects a copyrighted product that is not a character?  For example, if I called my character Rubik's Cube and had some sort of colorful cube-like pattern to a costume or called my 'toon Hershey Bar and had some sort of chocolate brown and silver costume going on, is that a name violation?  (Note, I made these two up.  I did however see two toons moments apart who were using food and game name brands like these.)

 

Some players are going to hate it, but it is our responsibility to report character names that are in violation of the CoC though the support system.

We do this not only because it is a violation of the CoC but also to protect the game that we love.

 

Report as you need to in order to protect THE CITY.

 

The people that are against the community reporting violations of the CoC don't really love this game.

[UltraAlt]

On 7/20/2022 at 6:19 AM, BastionWalls said:

So, honest question here, what constitutes the difference between copyright and homage? I enjoy making "homage" characters and seeing how close I can get in the creator. I am not too concerned with my "inspired by" toons such as Park Knight, my color swapped Plant/Thorn Dom, but I do have some that are closer to "real life", such as Chasseur De Betes, a AR/TA Cor who came out surprisingly close to his House of Mouse inspiration. Is a name change enough? color-swap? power-swap? All 3 required? Obviously understand the need for the policy and don't want to give the dev's busy work monitoring all the reports, but are there specific rules or is it more, "I'll know it when I see it"?

 

The difference is pretty simple.

 

Hulk, Incredible Hulk. Huik (the i looks like a lowercase L ingame by default), etc. would be copyright infringement ... especially if your character has green skin and you were torn purple pants.

 

A Homage would be Rampage, Angry Radioativeman, etc. with purple skin and green torn pants.