Did you ever get hit with it?
Understand, please, that when I first started playing CoH, right around issue 6, I had never played an mmorpg. Ever. So I was pretty naive about the rules of character creation and copyright infringement and so forth. Being raised during the Silver Age of classical comics my tastes in super hero characters was somewhat archaic. When I started to create my very first hero I had no interest in creating a cyborg-super ninja-pirate-cowboy (My youngest son actually created that character; obviously something wrong in his up-brangin').
So...anyways...my first character was an invulnerability/super-strength tank....modelled after a well-known DC comics super-hero from Mars. I forget his name. HOT-DAMN he was beautiful. My oldest son took one look at him and said the developers would hunt me down.
Had a BLAST with him....even considering how much of a newb I was. Got a lot of compliments about the costume and character. I remember right around level 20 one player saying "Oh...WOW...beautiful work; but they'll never let you keep him." I didn't care. I was already at level 20, so I reasoned that if they hadn't already done something about him they weren't going to.
I remember hitting the weekend at about level 25, rolling out of bed, throwing on my religious bath robe, pouring a cup of coffee, and booting up the pc to get my daily dose of thug thwacking. Only...something was wrong. All the original costume pieces for my character were gone. I called my oldest son to the room and asked him what had happened. He took one look at the screen and broke out into gales of laughter.
This was disconcerting, since I always insisted that my sons treat their father with all due respect and deference. I gave him a couple of minutes to regain the ability to breathe, and resume a standing position. When he was finally able to speak again he said "You been genericed! Bwahahahahahaha!"
Well, as you know, I now had to make a choice; should I delete the character and start over, or continue on with a revamped costume for Generic 1213?
I had too much time invested in the character to delete him, so I chose the second option. I kept the Generic 1213 moniker and picked a new costume for him. He still looked somewhat like the popular DC superhero from Mars, but a few tweaks here and there proved sufficient to keep the devs satisfied.
Generic and I went all the way to level 50 together. And it was a memorable run. Hot DAMN....he was beautiful.
I had a Martial Arts/Shield Defense Scrapper named Capt Latina America with 5 costumes representing 5 different countries in South America. Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru and of course, Chile.
Was hit with the generic bat for the name and all the costumes, not just the Chile one. I thought it was excessive since the other 4 were costumes I made up myself, using colors/symbols of each country's flag. They didn't look like any comic book character that I knew of.
Quote from: ricodah on May 10, 2015, 03:10:57 PM
I had a Martial Arts/Shield Defense Scrapper named Capt Latina America with 5 costumes representing 5 different countries in South America. Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru and of course, Chile.
Was hit with the generic bat for the name and all the costumes, not just the Chile one. I thought it was excessive since the other 4 were costumes I made up myself, using colors/symbols of each country's flag. They didn't look like any comic book character that I knew of.
That is very odd, and more than a little hypocritical considering all of the stuff that went down with Statesman and Hero One in regards to "Copyright infringement"
My ill troller "Full Blown Aides" got the bat despite my pleas to the gms that i had no idea why anyone would find aides offensive. Yet Fantastic ForceKin was still going strong at closing after 2 years +. Go figure. My warshade based on Jayna the wonder twin survived even longer. They should have hit that one not only for the copyright infringement but for the concept being her changing into animals yet me making her human-only after several failed attempts at tri-form.
I had many "Homage" type characters that players (including myself) thought were going to get hit with generichero but I never was. My way around most of em was to use the word Gaic in front of the name (IE Gaic Vision) and then change the costume somewhat. I still kept the color scheme and most of what the hero would look like but I tweeked it in some way. Usually not as much as they've done in the movies, but it worked.
Course with my altitus, it may have been the devs knew I would self police once a new idea came along anyway. :)
My wife got generic'd for a character she'd been playing for years inspired by Raggedy Ann's look. She was less than pleased.
I think most players at some point created a trademarked character, if only to test the power of the character creator. I made a Lobo toon named The Main Man when I was a noob, but after that I only made wholly original characters because it was... funner!
I'd be surprised if anyone ever got hit with the bat based purely on costume since none of the costume pieces were logos or marks (like the Bat symbol or Superman's "S"). Marvel got spanked real good by NC's lawyers when Marvel tried to say they owned all rights to the generic "star on a shield".
"Full Blown Aides" probably offended some delicate spaz, and the devs had to respond as per policy. It's impossible to know the actual numbers but I'd be willing to bet half the toons that got the bat were from complaints, not from (what people mislabel as) infringements.
Where's FatherXmas? He'll put me in my place with some official stat! (Secretly, I tremble in fear of his immense knowledge smiting my assumptions)
Quote from: Floride on May 10, 2015, 07:04:19 PM
"Full Blown Aides" probably offended some delicate spaz, and the devs had to respond as per policy. It's impossible to know the actual numbers but I'd be willing to bet half the toons that got the bat were from complaints, not from (what people mislabel as) infringements.
I think you're right about this. There was only one instance during all the years I played the game where another player complained about one of my toons being a copyright infringement and threatened to report me. I told him to take his best shot, mainly because I thought he was some juvenile punk spouting off so people would notice him in chat. But I can guarantee you there were others who never said anything directly to me that probably complained to the devs....
My first character I ever made was named Power Mace, an Electric Armor/ War Mace Tanker. I modeled him look exactly like Thor. Two years later, I renamed him to Steelhelm and made him a different look, although it still kinda bore some resemblance to Thor, but less blue and red and more black and gold.
Once only - when Captain America was being dead in the comics until he got better, I did a shield / MA scrapper called "Cyber-America" - made a really nice robot version of Cap. After a couple weeks they genericed the costume and sent me a message "too close to a copyrighted character..yada yada yada", but let me keep the name. So I just made a new non-Cap-like costume and was fine.
I knew a SG mate who made a hero called "Wally West" - with the Flash costume and Super Speed and all that, and then got mad when they genericed his name and costume. We were all like - "well DUH".
At least TRY to make it a little different.
I did have some few who, I suppose, should have been whammied, but they never were. I had a Fusionette clone as spot-on as I could get her by eyeball estimate, but I also had her bio reassuring the devs that I liked her and wouldn't run her dishonorably, and they seemd to leave her be.
On more serious ground, I had a few Venture Bros. tributes, as shown in my group photos of my toons in the "Multimedia" section here. I actually ran Dr. Myron Morpheus and Briana Morpheus (my tributes to Dr. Byron Orpheus and his daughter, Triana) quite a bit, and was surprised that they never got gigged.
My version of Captain America is on the right, in the back row, in my group photos. A female toon, dressed in vertical red-white-red stripes with a red maple leaf in the middle (Canadian flag), called Commander Canada. She had a white shield with red rim and red maple leaf, and a war mace instead of super strength. Recognizable as Cap-inspired, but definitely not actionable. :) There's also Big Orange Guy in the photos - my version of the Incredible Hulk.
While the occasional questionable toon does beg to be tried, I have to agree that originals are more enjoyable. You don't have to worry about them, and they're YOUR creations - something to take pride in.
Quote from: Super Firebug on May 11, 2015, 04:34:54 AM
I did have some few who, I suppose, should have been whammied, but they never were. I had a Fusionette clone as spot-on as I could get her by eyeball estimate, but I also had her bio reassuring the devs that I liked her and wouldn't run her dishonorably, and they seemd to leave her be.
Did they generic their own copyrights? That seems odd.
Back in 2004, my very first character (electric/electric blaster) I tried to costume him out like some type of medieval knight. I named him Sir Cumcision. He made it to level 16 and then was nerfed to GenericHero05 mid mission. He kept that name up to shutdown.
Quote from: Vee on May 11, 2015, 05:13:06 AM
Did they generic their own copyrights? That seems odd.
Not to my knowledge. I read Blackout's above post about Statesman, Hero One and copyright infringement. Not having heard anything about any specific incident, I had assumed that, perhaps, NCSoft had objected to players copying Statesman and Hero One.
Quote from: RGladden on May 10, 2015, 08:54:43 PM
I think you're right about this. There was only one instance during all the years I played the game where another player complained about one of my toons being a copyright infringement and threatened to report me. I told him to take his best shot, mainly because I thought he was some juvenile punk spouting off so people would notice him in chat. But I can guarantee you there were others who never said anything directly to me that probably complained to the devs....
I hear you about this one, when I made a villain I named it after my main character but added dark to it. I made quite sure that it did not look anything like a marvel character even made it a mastermind. But a really big tool I came across told me I was going to get genericed. I told him i used a Yugi-oh sort of thing buy adding Dark to my main character. I got angry and I told how is my character even close to resembling the marvel character he was talking about. (there is a reason for being vague about my characters names sorry.) He backed off and that was the only time someone tried to threaten me with an ip violation.
Quote from: Super Firebug on May 11, 2015, 07:02:10 AM
Not to my knowledge. I read Blackout's above post about Statesman, Hero One and copyright infringement. Not having heard anything about any specific incident, I had assumed that, perhaps, NCSoft had objected to players copying Statesman and Hero One.
I was referencing an incident where Marvel apparently threatened legal action because of Statesman's supposed similarities to Captain America, and Hero One's Supposed similarity to Captain Britain; I said that it was odd simply because despite being threatened over a design based upon a shared symbol (American flag, and the Union Jack) they generic batted Ricodah Captain Latin America character.
Sorry for the confusion there :)
Quote from: Blackout on May 11, 2015, 04:03:47 PM
I was referencing an incident where Marvel apparently threatened legal action because of Statesman's supposed similarities to Captain America, and Hero One's Supposed similarity to Captain Britain; I said that it was odd simply because despite being threatened over a design based upon a shared symbol (American flag, and the Union Jack) they generic batted Ricodah Captain Latin America character.
Sorry for the confusion there :)
Don't know where Marvel was coming from with that threat....cause I don't think they have a copyright on the use of the stars & bars of Old Glory. Those are used in a million different ways across the entire country. It's my opinion that they were just looking for cheap publicity...
Quote from: RGladden on May 11, 2015, 04:30:17 PM
Don't know where Marvel was coming from with that threat....cause I don't think they have a copyright on the use of the stars & bars of Old Glory. Those are used in a million different ways across the entire country. It's my opinion that they were just looking for cheap publicity...
Did a little digging around and it seems that I misremembered the case a little bit; Marvel weren't suing over hero one and Statesman, they were suing over an even more ridiculous reason.
The fact that you can create Marvel look alike's in city of Heroes. No, really. They actually tried to sue over the fact that you can create characters with green skin and purple shorts.
http://www.out-law.com/page-5381
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=460240
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/marvel-sues-ncsoft-over-city-of-heroes/1100-6113055/
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-11-11-marvel-sues-over-avatars_x.htm
I never got generic'd. I tried to make my characters' costumes different enough from their inspiration that they'd pass inspection, and I suppose it worked (even for the character who was named directly after a DC character - Dr. Bodog was named after his inspiration, Dr. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana).
I had a character named Richard Greyson. He had a Nightwing and Robin (earth 2 version). I also had a street biker outfit. They genericed his name and the Nightwing outfit. I avoided it for a long time by only appearing in public in the street biker outfit, but I forgot one day and was in Went's and someone reported me. (Screamin' Jayhawk seemed to be taking a hard look at me.)
They never got my pulp guy's:
Shadow's Ghost
John "doc" Savage
G8-Battle Ace
Air-Lad
Alex Raymond Gordon
Spirit Who Walks
Master of Men
Det. 1st Class Tracy
or my Misc weird guys
Major Matt Mason
Tom Corbett
Sebastian Collins
Or oddball Comic Guys:
Kamandi The Last Boy on Earth
Phantom Traveler
Foolkiller
Killraven
Sun Tsu Chang
Mr. Winterbourne
Sir Atom Knight
Doctor Mysteriso
Dr. Challenger
Captain Mar-vellous
Or my Music guys:
Jameson Hendrichs
Mr. Blue Suede Shoes
Farrokh Bulsara
Fool on the Hill
Thin White Duke.
Some of these were pretty obscure, but some I was sure were doomed.
For almost 2 years, I had a Dual Pistols/Device Blaster named Rick Grimes and had him done up in a brown police uniform with a cowboy had. Never had any issues.
Quote from: Blackout on May 11, 2015, 04:40:37 PM
Did a little digging around and it seems that I misremembered the case a little bit; Marvel weren't suing over hero one and Statesman, they were suing over an even more ridiculous reason.
The fact that you can create Marvel look alike's in city of Heroes. No, really. They actually tried to sue over the fact that you can create characters with green skin and purple shorts.
http://www.out-law.com/page-5381
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=460240
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/marvel-sues-ncsoft-over-city-of-heroes/1100-6113055/
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-11-11-marvel-sues-over-avatars_x.htm
Oh it was much more fun then that. And those of us that were playing then had a real scare that the game might have actually been shut off, at least while the trial was active.
I have the PDFs some place on my PC as the complaints were in public record but Marvel claimed in the suit that they:
a) invented super-heroes and b) invented mutants.
Now as for the first one - not even DC can claim they created 'super-heroes' as they have been around since the time of the Greeks. And I am sure Darwin would have something to say about someone claiming to have invented mutants.
Besides that, like 98% of the Marvel clone screenshots given in evidence were created by Marvel employees that subscribed to the game for the sole purpose of making Marvel characters to show the judge that people were using their copyrighted characters.
Then after ALL that - Marvel goes to Cryptic to make a deal for them to work on Marvel's own MMO.
Quote from: makjwalton on May 11, 2015, 08:42:05 PM
For almost 2 years, I had a Dual Pistols/Device Blaster named Rick Grimes and had him done up in a brown police uniform with a cowboy had. Never had any issues.
I'd have to insist that that toon pass the star or i'd be out.
Quote from: doc7924 on May 11, 2015, 11:26:38 PM
I have the PDFs some place on my PC as the complaints were in public record but Marvel claimed in the suit that they:
a) invented super-heroes and b) invented mutants.
They're all here. Including the exhibits that got tossed because Marvel actually logged into the game to commit the trademark infringements themselves. It's a fun read!
https://www.eff.org/cases/marvel-v-ncsoft (https://www.eff.org/cases/marvel-v-ncsoft)
I was totally surprised that I was able to run Lemmy Kilmister, Jr. all the way to 50 without so much as a visit from Motorhead.
I was also surprised that The Increbidle Hulk got belted into left field with that bat.
I also created a rip-off of Flower Knight and of Kalinda, but they wouldn't care about those. They just want to be not sued, cowards.
Quote from: Floride on May 12, 2015, 04:43:26 AM
They're all here. Including the exhibits that got tossed because Marvel actually logged into the game to commit the trademark infringements themselves. It's a fun read!
https://www.eff.org/cases/marvel-v-ncsoft (https://www.eff.org/cases/marvel-v-ncsoft)
Not to take Marvel's side but if they put claws and regeneration as powers in the game, did they not think that people would make copies of you know who?
I think it was one of the reasons they didn't work on shields for the first few years.
As far as i know musicians' names aren't copyright protected, so no surprise on any of those mentioned not getting the bat.
Quote from: Castegyre on May 10, 2015, 05:43:03 PM
My wife got generic'd for a character she'd been playing for years inspired by Raggedy Ann's look. She was less than pleased.
Your wife was clearly in the right. She should have petitioned the judgement using public domain as a defense.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raggedy_Ann
The doll itself was patented in 1915, and the first book published in 1918. Both IP protections expired years ago.
Quote from: doc7924 on May 11, 2015, 11:26:38 PM
Oh it was much more fun then that. And those of us that were playing then had a real scare that the game might have actually been shut off, at least while the trial was active.
I have the PDFs some place on my PC as the complaints were in public record but Marvel claimed in the suit that they:
a) invented super-heroes and b) invented mutants.
Now as for the first one - not even DC can claim they created 'super-heroes' as they have been around since the time of the Greeks. And I am sure Darwin would have something to say about someone claiming to have invented mutants.
Besides that, like 98% of the Marvel clone screenshots given in evidence were created by Marvel employees that subscribed to the game for the sole purpose of making Marvel characters to show the judge that people were using their copyrighted characters.
Then after ALL that - Marvel goes to Cryptic to make a deal for them to work on Marvel's own MMO.
That is beautiful in how horrifyingly hilarious it is. I was playing back in 2005 as well but due to my status as a tiny babby I didn't pay much attention to stuff like that at the time :P
Quote from: doc7924 on May 11, 2015, 11:26:38 PM
a) invented super-heroes and b) invented mutants.
Now as for the first one - not even DC can claim they created 'super-heroes' as they have been around since the time of the Greeks. And I am sure
<Snark!> Invented super heroes <Snark!> Not unless Marvel was around before the Epic of Gilgamesh...
Quote from: RGladden on May 12, 2015, 06:13:12 PM
<Snark!> Invented super heroes <Snark!> Not unless Marvel was around before the Epic of Gilgamesh...
Nope, but Gilgamesh was an Eternal and in the Avengers for a while, so I'm sure Marvel assumes the copyright is theirs.
Quote from: doc7924 on May 12, 2015, 09:24:37 AM
Not to take Marvel's side but if they put claws and regeneration as powers in the game, did they not think that people would make copies of you know who?
I think it was one of the reasons they didn't work on shields for the first few years.
Do they still copyright a ded guy? :-)
I had several genericed:
1) Green Bow - I guess having a green clad archery blaster was too much for them. :)
2) Powergirl - man, I had the best costume too. Didn't expect to keep her long though.
3) Lantern - I was never genericed, but when I deleted my Dark Corrupter and tried to make him a blaster, the name filter
wouldn't let me recreate him. Tried and tried to get them to listen to my point of few - he had a friggen Jack-o-Lantern head
for crying out loud. They insisted that the word Lantern belonged to DC comics.
The first two I can agree with, but Lantern was way over the line IMO. They were dead wrong.
Quote from: Vee on May 12, 2015, 12:03:16 PM
As far as i know musicians' names aren't copyright protected, so no surprise on any of those mentioned not getting the bat.
In the rules or policies or something that nobody ever read, but we all had to click that we agreed or accept or something, anyway, it said something about any persons alive or dead or any body parts, something like that.
And for the record, you don't want an angry Motorhead visiting you at two in the morning.
(eventhough there's only three of them and they're older than dirt.)
Well in that case i'm glad my Chaka Kahn clawls/wp villain 'Chaka Con' didn't get the bat, she was my main tf soloer.
Quote from: silvers1 on May 14, 2015, 02:04:49 AM
I had several genericed:
1) Green Bow - I guess having a green clad archery blaster was too much for them. :)
2) Powergirl - man, I had the best costume too. Didn't expect to keep her long though.
3) Lantern - I was never genericed, but when I deleted my Dark Corrupter and tried to make him a blaster, the name filter
wouldn't let me recreate him. Tried and tried to get them to listen to my point of few - he had a friggen Jack-o-Lantern head
for crying out loud. They insisted that the word Lantern belonged to DC comics.
The first two I can agree with, but Lantern was way over the line IMO. They were dead wrong.
Oddly enough my first Khelidan I called "Doc Lighte" and then never got touched in 6 years.
I was thinking with all the Marvel films, DC TV series - the GM's would be in overtime mode from all the heroes that would have to generic.
I remember when "The Incredibles" came out - game was flooded with copies for a few months.
I made a military lookin empath healer named Doc Lacroix. Guess he was obscure enough that nobody noticed the Starship Troopers reference. Deleted him in favor of a non-huge empath - it's not easy trying to heal peeps when you can't see around your healer in a cave.
I had a Dark/Dark defender named Doc Midnight.
He looked nothing like the Doctor Mid-Nite from DC comics, which may be why he was never genericed. But I always
expected it to come ....
Quote from: Floride on May 15, 2015, 01:04:23 AM
Deleted him in favor of a non-huge empath - it's not easy trying to heal peeps when you can't see around your healer in a cave.
That's only true if you're trying to heal teammate's pets with single target heals. Otherwise the size of the Empath didn't matter at all.
Quote from: ricodah on May 15, 2015, 03:55:17 AM
That's only true if you're trying to heal teammate's pets with single target heals. Otherwise the size of the Empath didn't matter at all.
You might be forgetting this simple formula:
Huge + cave = disaster.
Quote from: ricodah on May 15, 2015, 03:55:17 AM
That's only true if you're trying to heal teammate's pets with single target heals. Otherwise the size of the Empath didn't matter at all.
So you are saying size doesn't matter? ???
Quote from: doc7924 on May 15, 2015, 01:41:16 PM
So you are saying size doesn't matter? ???
For an Empathy healer, not at all. Why would it? Teammate doesn't need to be seen to be healed.
Every time I played Science Ninja, I worried about getting generic'd. I made five different costumes for this character and played as five different characters.
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i.minus.com%2FjbnHnQQCMDzcs4.jpg) (http://minus.com/i/bnHnQQCMDzcs4)
Quote from: ricodah on May 15, 2015, 03:51:11 PM
For an Empathy healer, not at all. Why would it? Teammate doesn't need to be seen to be healed.
Teammates should be healed, but not seen.
Kind of like children were supposed to be seen, but not heard.
My natural Invul/SS tanker, Naked Man got very far before getting his name genericized, but oddly not his costume (this was before the bare legs option was available so I had to make his skin orange to get the closest match to the tights option).
Streaking was so much fun I made a Fire/Fire tanker named "Naked Elf" with a demonic appearance that almost got to 50 before his name but not costume genericized.
The name Healing Gimp was apparently also offensive, though if they had a problem with that they really shouldn't have offered so many S&M costume choices.
Minicore never got the generic bat, even though he was just a tiny version of Manticore whose bio stated that Crey's cloning technique was not always perfect.
Quote from: Vee on May 11, 2015, 05:13:06 AM
Did they generic their own copyrights? That seems odd.
Nope. i had Doctor Vahzilok on several servers and wasn't genericed. The character name and look policy was largely to protect the company from being sued by other companies. For the most part the only characters liable to be hit with the generic bat were those with offensive names and/or costumes or those that were obviously intended to be copies of other companies' characters/real people without permission.
Name alone wasn't generally enough and Harry Dresden was allowed in CoH because he was played by the author, as well as a few other characters i met who were played with permission from the creators. That said, even then there was the occasional run-in for Harry Dresden that had to be cleared up because there wasn't some monolithic AI making judgments about infringement, only whatever GM happened to draw the short straw that day. An SG i was in around late '04/early '05 had their named changed from Metaknights because of a Nintendo character by that name. One issue is that most people, even GMs, aren't familiar with copyright and trademark law and after the Marvel lawsuit the GMs tended to err on the side of caution.
Generally speaking i never made characters that were obviously intended to be offensive or copies of existing superheroes. It was never an issue because i had more character concepts than the game had character slots and i was incapable of even making homage characters without a lot of tweaking and alterations. i think the closest i came to copying an existing character was basing my MA/SR Scrapper Seiben on Sechs, the Tuned series android copy of Gally/Alita from GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita. Seiben's original costume even looked very similar to Sechs' first appearance. Never had the urge to make Claws/Regen Wulverrine or SS/WP HulKKK or Inv/SS C1ark K3nt or En/En SS7 Son Gokuu (and yest, most of those are actual characters i saw and shook my head over), so it made it easy to avoid the generic bat. Although i did make the PB DragonnadZ on Freedom with a bio making fun of Saiyan wannabes and randomly referencing FMA, so i wasn't quite completely innocent.
I never got generic-ed, which is a little surprising.
I used to use the names of old, now public domain, heroes... and then outfit them in one slot like the old heroes, and in the others like similar Marvel / DC characters. But I never got nerfed.
I had Nukla, who had costumes like Captain Atom (Charlton version) and The Ray (both GA and 90's in the cool leather jacket, HA), and Booster Gold (I know it doesn't fit the powerset.)
And Nightbird, who was a dark/dark scrapper and had costumes for Dr Mid-Nite, Moon Knight, Obsidian (and I amazingly got this costume *dead-on*), and the GA Sandman. I tried for one like the Shadow, too... but never got it tweaked just right for my tastes.
Another thing I did was pick a hero, and build my direct copy. Then, go through the costume creator and tweak the look and name and powersets until I got something unique. Using this method I came up with Aracari (Robin, but red, yellow and black, like the bird), Wombatman (a combo Batman and Wolverine), Dynamo-Man (believe it or not a male character in homage to Power Girl, Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr.), Scott Comet (Adam Strange, Tom Corbett, The Rocketeer)
But, my favorite of them all, and one I am amazed never got nerfed... And I thought this toon was so clever on so many levels, but nobody else ever seemed to get the joke... The Silver Beetle. His real name was Jean-Paul Georgeringo, and he worked for the law firm of John, Jacob, Jingleheimer, Schmidt. His main three costumes each looked exactly like one of the three Blue Beetles', but silver instead of blue (duh). I even had separate builds to fit each costume (i.e. The Ted Kord version could not fly, the other two could). I thought he was so clever, but the only comment I ever got was "nice costume" one time when I was running him in Jaime Reyes mode. Ha Ha Ha!
Then, I imported the Reyes costume, changed the secondary color to a turquoise blue and shrunk it to make my homage to the Wasp, Yellowjacket, and other shrinking heroes... Dr Dragonfly, a fire/fire blaster. (Get it... a fire-breathing Dragon...fly)
I also had a toon costumed *exactly* like Mister Miracle. But, I forget which one that was. I think it was the Electric Blaster, Electrotechnotic. (And that name was adapted from another name I thought up for my fire scrapper, Pyrotechnotic. For awhile I was adding "technotic" to every power-type to create new toons... Hydrotechnotic, etc).
Ah, great fun. I so miss this game. There is nothing else like it.
It was ok to copy a look and even the powerset of another hero, but not the name.
And yes, you could copy NPC's until your slots were full and nobody cared.
Unless the costume was identifiable to a character, like superman, batman, and maybe the flash. Oh and also wonder woman.
So green skin, no shirt, and purple short pants are ok if you name the toon Angry Green Man.
See the problem was that all the characters became the property of NCSoft, and they couldn't own copyrighted
But I'm just guessing.
Quote from: Nyx Nought Nothing on May 17, 2015, 03:19:18 PM
Nope. i had Doctor Vahzilok on several servers and wasn't genericed. The character name and look policy was largely to protect the company from being sued by other companies. For the most part the only characters liable to be hit with the generic bat were those with offensive names and/or costumes or those that were obviously intended to be copies of other companies' characters/real people without permission.
Hmmmm, then I'm wondering why my "Abe Vigoda" never got nerfed.
Which now has me thinking of all my comedy toons... Captain Colorblind, Doctor Defeatable, Running-Away Man, Magic Gus, Mr Manpanties (who surprisingly never got genericed and was an homage to all the serial heroes who somehow always managed to wind up on an alien planet wearing swim trunks, a helmet, and a cape), Man With A Gun (making fun of the x-treme 90's heroes), Chuckles the Barbarian, Doctor OCD (insisted on staying behind after *every* fight to clean up, and refused to do sewer missions... he got kicked alot), Kid Sidekick Boy, and Captain Frogtoes.
Then there was my homage to Harry Dresden, Supernatural, and John Constatine (or the trenchcoat brigade in general)... Zachariah Abel. And, another toon I thought was so extraordinarily clever that nobody else ever seemed to notice... Doctor Hooloovoo (psychic blast / time manipulation). Yes, he was blue. ;D
Quote from: hurple on May 18, 2015, 06:27:42 PM
Which now has me thinking of all my comedy toons... Captain Colorblind,
You were Captain Colorblind? Dude, genius!
I remember reading passers-by commenting about your new costume:
"Nice threads, Captain Colorblind!"
Quote from: Paragon Avenger on May 18, 2015, 07:53:59 PM
You were Captain Colorblind? Dude, genius!
I remember reading passers-bys commenting about your new costume:
"Nice threads, Captain Colorblind!"
I picked the most "busy" costume options and then tried to use every single color option available. It was beautiful!
Then, I had him go around bragging about his brand-new solid black costume. "Makes me look like Batman"
:o :D :o
His symbol was, of course, a pink eye. and his powerset was illusion.
It's all about the eyes, you see... Bwah-ha-ha-ha!
Unfortunately, I lost all my screen shots in a HD crash. I'll see if I can recreate in Icon, though.
Hmmm... can't figure out how to embed a photo
It's easy
- It's Easy
- Make photo
- Save photo to a file
- Enroll in a free photo-sharing site
- Avoid the cheesey marketing
- Don't click the links leading to virus infected sites
- Upload your photo to the site
- Careful how you set the permissions, try to keep photos private
- Don't fall for the 40% off sales
- Find the share button
- Look for the URL option
- Carefully copy the URL
- Post a reply to the target thread
- Make sure to quote any relavent posts
- Write your text
- Insert an image tag
- paste the url that you had pasted previsously between the img tags
- Check the preview
- Click post if everything looks ok
- Delete the marketing emails from the free photo-sharing site
- Take up drinking to cope with this process
- It's easy
Or use imgur.com that takes most of the pain away.
All my hits from the generic bat were on grounds of taste.
I was sore they genericed my cheerleader scrapper Debbie does Talos which tended to amuse a lot of people.
I was astounded when they genericed The pocket rocket which is a fairly common nickname for small dynamic sportsmen here in the UK. Then I googled it and discovered it appeared to be only behind the credit card in terms of pieces of plastic loved by American women. I appealed and got the name back, on the grounds that as at the time, I was a 40 year old UK male, there was no way I meant that (I actually got the name from pocket rockets being a pair of aces in hold-em poker).
I had very few knockoffs among my 250 characters, TheoPWildebeest was too obscure to be recognised, a comic character of british comedian Lenny Henry, supposedly the horniest man in the world. Tweenage Rampage was a blatant Hit-Girl knockoff, but she was in the white shirt/green check skirt costume most of the time and only got the purple hair inside instances.
A friend had Cupid stunt for about 5 or 6 years. Many Americans are surprised to know that this was the name of a recurring prime time British TV character of the 1980s. The late British comedian Kenny Everett in drag complete with beard and ludicrous huge false boobies doing a fake chatshow appearance alongside a cardboard cutout of the biggest chatshow host of the day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxf8Sf_Hyk4
Or use Dropbox. It creates a special directory call public. Just copy your photon into it, right click and choose "copy public link" and bob's your uncle!
I got it for a mastermind to on I named orichimaruu. I purposely my spelled it. I even explained that the name was misspelled and it was a part of Japanese culture lore. They still said too close to naruto
toon...
OK, the dropbox option doesn't seem to work for me...
So just go here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9dr33hk22wjeu7s/screenshot_150519-23-31-47.jpg?dl=0 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/9dr33hk22wjeu7s/screenshot_150519-23-31-47.jpg?dl=0)
I can see why he is being guarded by two cops.
When the Increbidle Hulk got hit with the bat, they sent me an email allowing me to rename him.
Also, they messed-up his costume, I set it back to the way it was before.
Although I did give him blue instead of purple pants.
During AP33, I rerolled him up on Freedom and got him in one of the instances.
A developer commented that I liked the costume designer. I figured, hey the game's gone only a couple weeks let, who cares.
I had one that really should have gotten generic'd to blazes.
I came up with an idea for a character homage to YellowJacket named Pym Particle. The really bizarre part of this is my concept had my hero as some shlub working as a janitor and stole some Pym particles.
In my defense, when I quit collecting Avengers, there was no Scott "Clubber" Lang.
fortunately for me, I couldn't get an outfit I liked for him and killed him off before long... now my Wasp ripoff was pretty spot on (Rad/Nrg fender). :)
Quote from: Ankhammon on May 26, 2015, 04:27:47 PM
I had one that really should have gotten generic'd to blazes.
I came up with an idea for a character homage to YellowJacket named Pym Particle. The really bizarre part of this is my concept had my hero as some shlub working as a janitor and stole some Pym particles.
In my defense, when I quit collecting Avengers, there was no Scott "Clubber" Lang.
fortunately for me, I couldn't get an outfit I liked for him and killed him off before long... now my Wasp ripoff was pretty spot on (Rad/Nrg fender). :)
Ah, I made a yellowjacket homage, too. But, after getting everything set, I went back and re-imagined everything to black and turquoise, changed his powerset to fire/energy and made him the (fire-breathing) Dragonfly. He's the only toon I ever made where I used one costume slot for his Secret civilian ID. Made it full-sized and put him in a suit. Then, made a key bind to fire off one of the change costume animations and switch to the tiny little Dragonfly costume...
Anybody ever get grief for an "homage" toon? I had one guy give me a real hard time about my Booster Gold lookalike, including the line, "Why would you want to waste your time trying to look like *him*?"
Ah, now I'm wanting to hit Icon to try to recreate some of these homage toons. I made a pretty spot-on Mr Miracle... but can't for the life of me remember how, now. :o
Can't imagine why no one ever does Pym's 80s era red one-piece Gizmonics Institute jumpsuit.
I want to do a tribute to Danger Mouse, Mighty Mouse, and Speedy Gonzales, but the game doesn't let you do tiny mouse characters.
Of course if I did Danger Mouse, people would ask why is Pinky and The Brain wearing an eye-patch.
I always wanted to do an "homage" toon to all the various Flashes (Jay, Barry, Wally) but whatgood is a "speedster" in a game where *everybody* can have super-speed if they want it?
I had on one server all 12 free slots with Legion of Super Hero toons.
I never played them and only logged them in to the game so they would be saved.
I just did them to see how close I could make them to the comic book outfits. (turns out you could make some almost perfectly)
Also did the same for the JLA and JSA, one different servers.
But any mouse characters?
I didn't think so.
If you did Mickey Mouse, Disney would probably buy NCSoft just to shut the game down.
Quote from: artbunker on May 21, 2015, 05:10:17 PM
I got it for a mastermind to on I named orichimaruu. I purposely my spelled it. I even explained that the name was misspelled and it was a part of Japanese culture lore. They still said too close to naruto
toon...
That's sad I never got genericed, I had:
-a Fire/Elec blaster "Sasuke Kun" since i1 or i2 in both original blue shirt and in all black
-I also had 2 different MA/SR "Rock Lees" the 1st I deleted out of boredom
-The Evil Shockwave nrg/nrg blaster which I created in i1 or i2 with side switching in mind before villains was officially announced lol
-"Ryo of Wildfire" brute eventually renamed as a precaution, has sub armor, full armor, and armor of inferno costumes
After that i got more creative with the names (most of which I won't be giving away hehe):
-the 2nd Rock Lee was a recreation that would eventually have both the all green original look, a combined 5 gates with chuunin vest costume, Mirai Trunks Costume and a Sagara Sanosuke costume(Kenshin)
-"Tough as a Trunk": SR/Will brute Optimus Prime eventually took a shot at the RID Scourge colors as way to play this toon in public
-a Post Skip Naruto and Yaruichi tribute using Stalker powerset
-a Brute you would think this was a SF shoto tribute but instead I made him a Mirai Trunks tribute(The croatoa arc helped me complete the look with a broadsword and energy blast) would have really loved to try to Solo Jack in Irons with this toon and those temp powers. Snaptooth would have gotten REKT in 5 seconds
-scrapper who had costumes covering Amaterasu'd Raikage, 2 for Static, and MK Deception: Raiden
-Master Manipulator/Manipulative Swordsman/TheOneWhoWillStandInTheHeavens I flirted around with numerous names for this Ninja Blade/Ninjitsu Stalker with a penchant for confusing the senses
-I named all my Bot henchmen including Incarnate Pets after G1 Autobots(with 2 exceptions), the 3 car bros, the 2 ambulances, guess lol. Then there was Omega Supreme + Elita One(those red goodguys), and Nightblade + Jetfire(battlebots) as well as some clockwork but I don't remember the names i gave em
I named a toon, Cheese Sandwhich and got banned from the game for life.
Luckily for me, that was the day before the announced shut-dwon so they waived their bannishment.
(just because it never happened doesn't make it untrue.)