The Generic Bat....

[Paragon Avenger]

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.

[doc7924]

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?  ???

[ricodah]

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.

[wei yau]

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

[Paragon Avenger]

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.

[Garble]

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.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

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.

[hurple]

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.

[Paragon Avenger]

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.

[hurple]

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

[Paragon Avenger]

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!"

[hurple]

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.

[hurple]

Hmmm... can't figure out how to embed a photo

[Paragon Avenger]

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

[Ice Trix]

Or use imgur.com that takes most of the pain away.

[Minotaur]

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

[MWRuger]

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!

[artbunker]

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...

[hurple]

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

[Paragon Avenger]

I can see why he is being guarded by two cops.