Character was reset...due to copywritten costume? WTF?

[cranebump]

1 hour ago, DarkPetting said:

Count yourself lucky they didn't go through your entire roster to see if anything else needed fixing.  One badly over the line arsenal themed character (GM must have been a spurs fan ...) and I lost a bunch of names.

Luckily I complained and they gave me a full refund.  /s

 

At first I thought this was the San Antonio Spurs, and I could not, for the life of me figure it out. Then I looked at "arsenal."

 

Ahhhhhhhh...NOW it makes sense...:-)

[Monty Haull]

10 hours ago, Sanguinesun said:

 

 A year ago?  You were on excelsior just hours ago. 

 

I know multiple people who reported you for that, though not I, as I knew your name was specifically from the D&D trope referring to campaigns with an over abundance of rewards in them... but the name was a parody even for DnD of Monty Hall the game show host.

 

You gambled on that intentionally and knew better. 

 

Then you went and made Money Mouse as a parody of Minnie Mouse with a monty hall twist.

 

I think you're still pushing your luck and going around the moderators sanctions against you is a sure fire way to get in worse hot water.

 

Coming here thinking you weren't in the wrong just also opens you to having more on your account scrutinized too. 

 

There's no right way to defend the wrong thing.

There is a lot to unpack here and I think some miscommunication.

 

I used the Monty Hall name over a year ago, like August of 2022.  I responding to the idea that the copyright enforcement was not a new thing. 

 

Hate to say it, I am not a huge DnD player so, I don't get the trope you are speaking of.  I was doing an homage to game show hosts.  

 

I did not make Money Mouse.  I know Money Mouse from Tundra Mouse.  She has a mouse theme going on.  I asked her to help me out since my time online for Monty is a little less these days.

 

I don't believe I am in any hot water.  I have been around enough GMs while in game, and my presence here should be proof of that.  If there IS a concern I would be happy to make adjustments.

 

I don't think I am doing anything wrong here.  I am paying homage to game show hosts and having fun with the players.  It's a win win.

[GM Crumpet]

1 minute ago, Monty Haull said:

There is a lot to unpack here and I think some miscommunication.

 

I used the Monty Hall name over a year ago, like August of 2022.  I responding to the idea that the copyright enforcement was not a new thing. 

 

Hate to say it, I am not a huge DnD player so, I don't get the trope you are speaking of.  I was doing an homage to game show hosts.  

 

I did not make Money Mouse.  I know Money Mouse from Tundra Mouse.  She has a mouse theme going on.  I asked her to help me out since my time online for Monty is a little less these days.

 

I don't believe I am in any hot water.  I have been around enough GMs while in game, and my presence here should be proof of that.  If there IS a concern I would be happy to make adjustments.

 

I don't think I am doing anything wrong here.  I am paying homage to game show hosts and having fun with the players.  It's a win win.

To be fair, Haull is a different play on Hall so it's got a good chance (even if generic'd) of that being reversed. The Monty Hall dungeon was an utterly ridiculous supplement with so much treasure it was impossible to carry it all away. "I load the treasure onto the mule". How much treasure? "All of it". OK the mule is so overloaded it's completely buried and has died of suffocation......

[Monty Haull]

46 minutes ago, GM Crumpet said:

To be fair, Haull is a different play on Hall so it's got a good chance (even if generic'd) of that being reversed. The Monty Hall dungeon was an utterly ridiculous supplement with so much treasure it was impossible to carry it all away. "I load the treasure onto the mule". How much treasure? "All of it". OK the mule is so overloaded it's completely buried and has died of suffocation......

Thank you for explaining it.  It was one of those people had mentioned but I didn't get it.

[UltraAlt]

On 4/11/2024 at 5:31 PM, Niizzy said:

Is this the consequences of the NcSoft thing already?

 

No, it is the consequences of you not reading the documentation that you agreed to when you made an account.

[Seed22]

I think it would do wonders and save the GMs so much time if there was a post or comment on the literal definition of homage. 
 

I think a lot of CoH players who get mad about being genereic’d lack understanding of what the word means, and think recreating superman but making him purple counts as a homage. 
 

 

 

Edited April 15 by Seed22

[Ghost]

5 hours ago, DarkPetting said:

Count yourself lucky they didn't go through your entire roster to see if anything else needed fixing.  One badly over the line arsenal themed character (GM must have been a spurs fan ...) and I lost a bunch of names.

Luckily I complained and they gave me a full refund.  /s

 

Spurs fans got nothing else to do…….it’s not like they have trophies to brag about

[Oubliette_Red]

Honestly, if inspiration is needed there are plenty of public domain resources available. Just for gits & shiggles I went to https://comicbookplus.com/ , a veritable warehouse of public domain comics, books and old time radio to look for inspiration. I perused through a couple of random comics and the first story in the second comic I paged through was about a town that suffered complete destruction every 100 years, by flood, fire and tornados and the only structure to remain standing was the clock tower.

 

The tower had been built by a clockmaker and was beloved by the community for his talent and generosity. He was a alchemist and experimented in his lab and when a drought struck the village who else to blame but the clockmaker so a mob ran him out of town, burning his home to the ground. The clockmaker placed a curse on the village that every 100 years on the anniversary of his death the village would be destroyed. And as every century rolled by, on the same day when the clock reached 2:29 in the afternoon, calamity stuck.

 

The story inspired me to make a Symphony/Time controller based on the title of the story: Knell of Doom

 

[AerialAssault]

For the OP's benefit, there are other servers out there which will let you do that stuff because they're making no attempt to play 'above board'. I won't mention which ones specifically, but they are out there.

 

If playing as copyrighted characters is a deal breaker then I would suggest they or anyone else like them to strongly consider migrating over.

 

However, Homecoming has, from day 1, implemented a stringent "No copyrighted characters" rule. I promise you, this isn't some mandala effect or site-wide gaslighting attempt. It has always been this way. If you're in doubt as to whether something would be considered in breach of that rule, you can always reach out to a GM or, ask yourself "Would any reasonable person be aware that I am lifting this character's name & appearance from a copyrighted IP?" and if the answer is "Yes", then it's probably for the best to abandon that idea.

[Player2]

4 hours ago, Seed22 said:

I think it would do wonders and save the GMs so much time if there was a post or comment on the literal definition of homage. 
 

I think a lot of CoH players who get mad about being genereic’d lack understanding of what the word means, and think recreating superman but making him purple counts as a homage. 

 

I try my best to explain it to people, but it does get tedious.

[GenericHero719]

2 hours ago, Oubliette_Red said:

Honestly, if inspiration is needed there are plenty of public domain resources available. Just for gits & shiggles I went to https://comicbookplus.com/ , a veritable warehouse of public domain comics, books and old time radio to look for inspiration. I perused through a couple of random comics and the first story in the second comic I paged through was about a town that suffered complete destruction every 100 years, by flood, fire and tornados and the only structure to remain standing was the clock tower.

 

The tower had been built by a clockmaker and was beloved by the community for his talent and generosity. He was a alchemist and experimented in his lab and when a drought struck the village who else to blame but the clockmaker so a mob ran him out of town, burning his home to the ground. The clockmaker placed a curse on the village that every 100 years on the anniversary of his death the village would be destroyed. And as every century rolled by, on the same day when the clock reached 2:29 in the afternoon, calamity stuck.

 

The story inspired me to make a Symphony/Time controller based on the title of the story: Knell of Doom

 

It really isn't that hard, probably why it bugs me when someone is just hella lazy about it. 
I saw some random reel or short about radioactive stones and gems yesterday, and found out Uranium is a darker silver color that would look neat with a uranium glass like green/teal secondary color on the Enforcer Heavy costume set covered in crystals

So I made a Stone/Rad tank with an Enforcer Heavy base, made adjustments, swapped the powerset appearance with Crystal Minimal Tintable, and it looks Rad... after building it for the look I found out that powerset combo is a BEAST.

 

Now I got a sweet little tankbot., all from a short video about rocks. It's just not hard.

[BurtHutt]

Again, I can't be sure if OP was the guy I teamed with but that guy was all kinds of ignorant. He called me dad because he recalls his dad editing their home movies and removing the fun parts. I couldn't stop laughing. I guess it never dawned on this 'genius' that his stealing of copyright material puts the game at risk especially after years of trying to get a license and become legit. I had to come back and post this cuz I just can't get over how clueless some people are...it's amazing. 

[Tachstar]

 

Homage, satire, or omnidirectional no no? I created this guy back in the old days but didn't play him much (same as now). Claws/SR, btw. Someday, maybe, I'll finally work out my Skyway City Beer story arc that's been brewing for years. Maybe even before GRRM finishes WoW. Or maybe not.

[BazookaTwo]

On 4/12/2024 at 10:00 AM, shatterpoint said:

I think it all depends on what attention you draw to yourself. Doing your best to make yourself THE copyrighted character...people don't appreciate that. Setting yourself apart creatively doesn't draw attention. During CoH's run they were heavily assaulted by outside powers (Marvel, DC) about things like this. The overall community doesn't like threats like that again. So, if you outright copy something they WILL take offense to it.

 

Some of us even chat you to say 'kewl costume' just to get your character name, global name, and petition you for harrassment/conduct - specifically to get you in front of the GMs...

 

[Lightslinger]

11 minutes ago, BazookaTwo said:

 

Some of us even chat you to say 'kewl costume' just to get your character name, global name, and petition you for harrassment/conduct - specifically to get you in front of the GMs...

 

Ugh, I send "Awesome look" or "Cool costume!" tells all the time when I pass by a great looking character, I hope this idea doesn't spread and people think I'm reporting them.

[BazookaTwo]

Just now, Lightslinger said:

Ugh, I send "Awesome look" or "Cool costume!" tells all the time when I pass by a great looking character, I hope this idea doesn't spread and people think I'm reporting them.

 

That's what's great about it! 

I've found that engaging the person and bringing up infringment just leads to childish outburts, so I do this instead. 

[Lightslinger]

3 minutes ago, BazookaTwo said:

 

That's what's great about it! 

I've found that engaging the person and bringing up infringment just leads to childish outburts, so I do this instead. 

 

You should just get yourself a macro for /getglobalname $target 

 

[momentarygrace]

On 4/15/2024 at 8:37 AM, Monty Haull said:

I am paying homage to game show hosts and having fun with the players.  It's a win win.

 

You made me do this.

 

 

[Oubliette_Red]

5 hours ago, BazookaTwo said:

 

That's what's great about it! 

I've found that engaging the person and bringing up infringment just leads to childish outburts, so I do this instead. 

 

5 hours ago, Lightslinger said:

 

You should just get yourself a macro for /getglobalname $target 

 

 

Exactly, as long as you have their name you can get their global. Though depending on the font you use it may be problematic, I've replaced mine with something easier to read and is usually a serif font so cap 'I's and lowercase 'l's can be differentiated.

 

[Scarlet Shocker]

Suffocated Mule sounds like an interesting character choice!

[Techwright]

On 4/16/2024 at 9:20 AM, Tachstar said:

 

Homage, satire, or omnidirectional no no? I created this guy back in the old days but didn't play him much (same as now). Claws/SR, btw. Someday, maybe, I'll finally work out my Skyway City Beer story arc that's been brewing for years. Maybe even before GRRM finishes WoW. Or maybe not.

 

Looks like he'd go through a lot of drum heads in his career, and I do mean "through" them.

 

49 minutes ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Suffocated Mule sounds like an interesting character choice!

 

If you're in the knacker and tanning business, absolutely.

[Scarlet Shocker]

58 minutes ago, Techwright said:

 

Looks like he'd go through a lot of drum heads in his career, and I do mean "through" them.

 

 

If you're in the knacker and tanning business, absolutely.

 

Or you take lots of powers just to slot strange procs! 😎

[Shin Magmus]

Having original and fun ideas is too hard, after all... why shouldn't I be allowed to copyright infringe at my leisure?  I found this quite humorous; Thanks OP!

[Attache]

On 4/11/2024 at 2:31 PM, Niizzy said:

Since when Homecoming have these shenanigans? I have characters inspired by Sabretooth, Psylocke and a lot of others well know characters, even their names is the same and nothing ever happened, now I made a complete Gambit replica and was proud as hell, having a lot of fun but when I logged into the game I saw the character was completely reset and received an email to not replicate the costume again because its copywritten???

 

Is this the consequences of the NcSoft thing already?

 

Yeah, as many have said, it has always been the Homecoming thing. It was kind of laughable when Homecoming itself was a rogue server but I did understand that while operating as such, they didn't want to attract the attention of the Disneys and the WBs of the world that might have enough money to make an issue when it seemed like NCSoft was letting things slide.

I get the impulse you have. The characters you describe are iconic. Hell, the comic industry has been heavily doing pastiches of existing IP for decades. It makes sense - the artists and writers grew up loving certain characters but Batman can't have 300 writers and artists. So folks make their own versions. It's what comics have always done.

Homages are your best bet - take the inspiration and put some distance between your version and the original's costume and origin. You can be a little tongue-in-cheek but you still want to infuse the character with enough that is different from the original so folks don't know exactly who you are meant to be at a glance. And it will feel more satisfying.

And trust me: There will still be folks who want to yuck your homage yum. I have a character whose costumes are meant to be video game characters so I made costumes evocative of iconic video game characters and I took care to make the names and costumes distinctive from the IP. Even so, I guess a couple are still too close and I get the occasional snide comment. If I were reported, it wouldn't really matter if my homage would hold up to legal scrutiny. It most likely would. But Homecoming GMs are just going to generic on the side of caution and call it a day.

You have to watch it with names as well. While names can be trademarked as book titles, a company really can't claim complete ownership of the name of an animal, place, or thing but even if your CoH Wolverine looks completely different from the comics, Homecoming's GMs are just going to generic you if someone takes the time to report it. They're volunteers and don't really have the time or bandwidth to research all the ins-and-outs and intricacies of IP. I think Marvel submitted a list of 6500 character names to Cryptic back in the day that they claimed that they "owned" while the lawsuit was happening. I've never seen the list but out of 6500 names, I'm sure the bulk were the common names of animals, places, things, etc that they assuredly did not own but the game studio wasn't about to battle them over it. 

Also worth mentioning that while it would be perfectly legally acceptable for DC to have a character called Wolverine as long as their version was distinct from the Marvel version and the comic title was something else, Disney would probably still throw a nuisance suit at them to protect the IP. It kind of falls to the owners to protect their IP and companies with enough money to do so vigorously. Homecoming can't take the risk.

Edited April 19 by Attache

[Attache]

That said, I still defend my 13-day stint as Dr. Rick Dagless in Pocket D as being vital to my mental health at the time. Speaking only in Darkplace quotes was endlessly amusing for me and probably a whole four other people.

When he was finally generic'd, he came back briefly as Dagless the White and eventually I just renamed him and left it at that. He never speaks now because it is speaking that gets me in trouble.

Edited April 19 by Attache