BlueWrecker

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The problem with that argument is what if those lower level people want to earn the Bling badge for Doc Buzzsaw or want to earn the Midas Touch badge for the Television? Basically you have people going from 1-25 in SG mode and then dropping out immediately after and staying out.

So as a result, you're getting maybe 100k Prestige from them during those 25 levels AND you end up with multiple sugardaddies in the SG. If they want to do the content for these two contacts, this is pretty much how they have to do it. Or grind for multiple days on end.

If you have people in your SG that absolutely don't care about content, then that's one thing and they can stay in SG mode longer, but otherwise, it's one or the other.

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Actually...

...on my 50th I can EASILY earn about a million influence by selling at the right stores and not playing in SG mode in an evening/day, by not playing solo. Without even pushing myself.

I know, because I used to do it whenever I'd drop below 10 million influence.

Assuming a character will earn about a million or two naturally before the Prestige/Inf cutoff, that means that with a little work you can earn the needed 20 million in under a month of playtime.

As the content will never expire--it's a 50th contact--whats bad with this?

On my main 40th villain I alternated VG/out of VG mode every other level after the cutoff and will continue to do so. I'll probably be able to open the TV not too far after I ding 50th.

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All the signature heroes left their respective pedestals and appeared in Atlas Park to honor the recently deceased Christopher Reeve. They all lined up and briefly saluted the real life Hero.

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Did this actually happen?

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It would be a nice tribute to add an NPC called Christopher Reeve or something similar to the game (with the family's permission of course).

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I think the best idea posited before was to add a statue somewhere like in Atlas, or to slightly change one to have no distingiushing "Superman" textures or other costume textures that could infringe, that has a similar build to Christopher Reeve.

It could have a clickable plaque that says "In honor of Christopher Reeve," with his date of birth and passing. Maybe similar ones to other comics or industries greats, who have passed. Or, if not a statue, perhaps simply place a row of clickable plaques in City Hall, or outside it, on the stone facade/lower level that surrounds it.

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I want to thank EVERYONE who made me an avatar. This took time and effort and I really do appreciate that.

Honestly, it pretty difficult to select just one. But here it is

A special thanks goes out to BlueWrecker for my new avatar.

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*sniffles* I'd like to thank my mom and dad, and my agent, and the Academy for this... you like me... you really like me!

Glad you liked it, Cricket.

This suggestion has been posted before, but as it seems the people are still unhappy with their archers...

Why not remove the rooting on the TA/archery sets? Just a thought. Leave everything as is on test right now, but remove rooting. If the numbers are for whatever insane reason going to be so weak, that could be the "angle" of this set.

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I started playing around with a DM/DA stalker last night, and:

Shadow Maul is very powerful.

Several times, I found two enemies standing close to one another and was able to shadow maul them both. I nearly always got a crit on one, and often got a crit on both.

The ability to line up shadow maul without anything seeing you or moving around in reaction to you is pretty nice.

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For Shadow Maul crit, does each "tick" crit?

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just gotta get our hands on one and see what it does, soon as I figure out how i'm gonna get to lvl 41 by only street hunting i'm grabbing soul drain and jumping headfirst into a mob.

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Are you crashing when entering missions?

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My wife was. Once she went to safe mode on test it seemed to only crash about 9/10 times. Very odd.

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"Where's our gorram air support?!"

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I lol'd.

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Let's face it, they made ALL the patron powers gimped so we wouldn't feel bad if we didn't want to take one.

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It's curious as well that

1. The powers are SO much weaker and expensive by the look of it relative to the EPPs hero side. Wasn't it stated by either Positron or Castle that they would be significantly stronger?

2. We basically have most of the numbers for most powers through vigorous player testing. Why were so MANY aspects of the numbers excluded? "Hard numbers" this may be, but it's a fraction of the numbers on them.

Both points need to be addressed, really...

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Reference for Corruptors...

Dark Embrace
* Self +RES (S/L, N. Energy, Tox)
* END: 1 unit/sec
* Recharge: 4 secs

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Dark Embrace costs 1 End/sec! If I'm not mistaken, the cost for a Brute to run Dark Embrace is about .19 End/sec---this is over 5 times as expensive as the Brute version (and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that its base RES levels are lower, as well). Come on, Devs---for the most part these are low level powers that we are getting in the 40s. Don't make them entirely useless, as well. Overlong recharges and prohibitive End costs will make them not worth taking.

I think I noticed that the Brute's Gloom recharges in 20 seconds, and I'm pretty sure that is about 2.5 times longer than it takes for my Dark Corruptor's Gloom to recharge (I think the End cost is significantly higher, too).

I personally don't mind being locked into one patron or the fact that the powers available are very similar from pool to pool, but if the powers themselves are severely diminished in their utility, I may not be taking PPPs after all---and I was really looking forward to them.

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/seconded. What is the rationale for the prohibitive endurance costs?

As the end cost of this power is five times higher than the Brute/Stalker/Scrapper Dark Armor, is the +res also five times higher for balance purposes?

Is this balanced against the Dark Embrace that Epic Hero pools get?

If not, this is BROKEN unfairly AGAINST villains and needs to be FIXED.

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I'd have to go back and check, but I believe it offers a 10% buff to your HP and some new costume options.

I haven't checked the costume options yet.

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It only offers a 5% boost to you max HP, but yes, it unlocks a costume piece, some military shoulder pads.

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Is the 5% HP boost confirmed? Also, screen shots of the military pads, please!

What is the auto-level for the zone? 50?

PM'd them to Cricket, but just tossing them out if anyone is curious. Welcome aboard!

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In Founder's Falls:
Williams Square named for Roger Williams who left Mass. to found Rhode Island.

Hutchinson Park is named for Anne Hutchinson who left Mass for religious freedom in Rhode Island.

The Gaspee was a British ship burned in Rhode Island during the revolutionary war.

The Blackstone Hills are named for the Blackstone River which flows into Providence (the capital ) Rhode Island.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Paragon City located in Rhode Island? This is something I heard/learned only recently after wondering for a long time.

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That is correct. In fact...

Did you know... Paragon City is actually an alternate universe Providence, RI?

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Really? Look at this map of Rhode Island. I'd always assumed that Paragon was actually a sister city south of Providence, ala Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota. Paragon is basically North and South Kingston, and Jamestown. Jamestown = Talos Island, the island with Nag Pond north of that is Peregrine Island. I think it's ironic that Dark Astoria would be Newport (lol).

Does that mean that Mercy Island = Block Island?

Does anyone know how to get this working with other non-English/Latin character sets? Say, Cyrillic, Chinese, etc.? My batch file chokes when I try that.

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Yes, but don't the other PvP zones have level limits, too? So you wouldn't necessarily have to worry about a level one wandering in...just extra goofy traffic in a zone that's already in poor shape.

j

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I'm sure they'd lock down the Portal itself.

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Awesome! I wonder if there is a different Top Dog badge on top of the Recluse statue?

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"Top Dawg", according to my all-knowing wife.

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Man oh man, you guys BETTER have the portal into RV inside of Atlas City hall in plain/easy to find sight of everyone. You BETTER. Can you imagine how insanely awesome it will look to "new" players when they first enter Atlas and see throngs of level 50s and a bloody **PORTAL** right off the bat?

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I don't know, I try to avoid hanging around Atlas Park too long. The broadcast channel in that zone has been known to cause brain damage.

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What better carrot to dangle though for new players than seeing stuff like a Statesman standing beside a portal as a clickable contact, and tons of 50s hanging around him, not to mention the great tech/look of the portal? The chatter is chatter, no big deal...

Man oh man, you guys BETTER have the portal into RV inside of Atlas City hall in plain/easy to find sight of everyone. You BETTER. Can you imagine how insanely awesome it will look to "new" players when they first enter Atlas and see throngs of level 50s and a bloody **PORTAL** right off the bat?


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"Hey kid, c'mere," said the grizzled old hero to the new kid just off the bus from Peoria, with a duffle bag over his shoulder, and ill-fitting tights beneath his jacket. The old hero pointed to the shaking, thunderous gateway. "You see that?"

"What is it?" the young man asked, nervously.

"What we fight for, kid. The only thing. Tomorrow."

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/e drool

Then why does the EULA specifically say *we* GRANT them the rights? This is like saying if Microsoft put in a EULA that all work 'authored' with their tools belongs to them because you clicked ok. The legality is dubious, and that's why Cryptic I'm thinking put in the clause that basically says "if it's not legal, you grant us the rights forever to your creation".

If it was never ours to begin with, as you attest, why put in that we specifically GRANT them to Cryptic? I don't want to speak about this in maybe this maybe that--it's simple semantics and I'd rather everyone didn't dance around for any kind of unneeded politeness. Language isn't polite, it is what it is.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but based on US Law:

You cannot copyright a name.

You can copyright a complete visual package of a character plus their story in conjunction. Superman's look, his powers, the fact he was rocketed to earth as a baby, reporter, etc. That is copyrightable.

You can trademark a name as brand mark. Superman is legally paid for, registered, and trademarked. The same as Mickey Mouse.

You have to go through Government Hoops and pay to trademark. You can't just slap the TM on their and off you go.

Is Cryptic going to trademark 17,000,000 names? Or hold them in perpetuity? It's unreasonable and unfathomable.




So... to bring this back to the front, yes, we do own anything and everything we create via the tools that's not a visual property of Cryptic already. Once we agree to the EULA--*if* it's legal--we "gift" or "grant" them the rights based on it's present wording. Based on that, they hold them.

What I am proposing is that the more appropriate way to do this would be to have a stipulation that upon deletion of a character all such gifted control of the rights to the name, concept, and *ANY* non-Cryptic content that they adverstise and market from a game perspective revert back to us.

What is unfair, undesirable, or unreasonable about that?

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While it would be nice, I kind of wonder whether it would be worth the time and expense to get a lawyer to come up with an altered EULA for Cryptic.

First of all, the only thing you are really risking (IMHO) is that the character might be genericed. Annoying, but much less problem than changing the EULA.

There is the tiny possiblity that one of your characters might become wildly popular and worth millions somehow, and that Cryptic might ask you for some of the money. But you can avoid that, by simply altering the name and appearance of the character before using it for profit in the future. Much cheaper than hiring a lawyer, for both you and Cryptic.

Due to the Marvel lawsuit, Sean "Manticore" Fish changed the name of the character Bastion to Citadel. Did Marvel think of the name Bastion first? Who knows? For all I know, Sean thought the name up in High School, possibly decades before the Marvel Character showed up. But I bet Marvel legally protected it first.

Manticore dealt with it in a mature and professional manner (or so it seems, he could have thrown furniture around the office for all I know), and I suggest we do likewise.

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I'm curious why people keep avoiding the fact that you *cannot* copyright a name, only trademark it.

I'm just saying that based on all of this thread, unless Cryptic/NCSoft have some plan to permanently retain ownership of the names of our characters, it would be a sign of good faith for them to adjust the EULA that all of them revert back to player ownership upon deletion.

Unless they *WANT* to own 17+ million names, which is very possible.

But as I said the real question is the legality of a EULA, but IANAL, and I don't want to debate that because that might get the thread closed. I just think redname attention should be drawn to this facet, as it's what's most troubling. The company owned content, story, graphics and such--no question, it's theirs, its not up for debate--the real question is do they intend for us to NEVER be able to use or profit from any character name imported into this game.

Do they intend to keep all these names forever? Because if they do, at least in the USA, they need to trademark them if so.

For example, if I were a scientist that specialized in spiders, and wanted to give science lectures and symposiums for students I could likely get away with billing myself as The Spider Man, being the world's leading expert on arachnids. If I were a 60 year old man with a big beard and belly, and say British, there would be no real brand confusion between me and Peter Parker. I could do it. No confusion between me and Marvel's Spider-Man mark there.

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Another twist. I'm a novelist. I'm a writer. I write novels for a living.
What if I want to write a novel of my character, or are in the middle of writing a novel and decide to remake a char in CoH/V?

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Don't do it.

Basically, Cryptic/NCsoft owns all characters/names/images that appear in CoH/CoV.

If you were a special case (say you were Warren Ellis, and you wanted to make Spider Jerusalem in the game, and you contacted Cryptic, and they gave you the nod), it might work out (and there would probably be lawyers or at least some serious paperwork involved). But those instances are nebulous and so few and far between, it's not worth risking.

Keep your CoH/CoV characters seperate from those you plan to sell, and you should be fine.

cheers,
Arctic Sun

[/ QUOTE ]Would keeping them seperate include deleting one that was existant in CoX prior to copyrighting/trademarking?

As I said above, the implication of the EULA is with "content". If we remove that "content" by deleting that character, would that not remove any liablity from either side? So long as they observed the seperation of the games specific content and images (Hero/Villain groups, city/world history, zones, specific power names, etc.) from your end, and accepted that all of that character's images previously existant from when that character was on the servers would still be considered your "content," would you guys press the issue and try to claim ownership over whatever became of it after it was deleted off your servers?

I can agree that everything up to that point is considered "content" within CoX, and subject to the EULA, but after it is removed by the user?

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I think the more this is read the implication that Cryptic intends tp keep them "forever" is bad form, possibly not legal, and just outright rude to it's client base.

A more appropriate revision would be something that states that "While they exist in the game, we reserve rights to use them. Deletion of character content by players returns full rights immediately to the player/client, but we reserve the right to use their content's likeness for promo materials afterwards, blah blah."

So, make a toon: they can use it at will while it's there.

Delete said toon: the name, story (your own content only), basic non-cryptic likness is fully yours, but they reserve rights to play with it later.

This would assure players and guarantee to them that they retain their content, in the end of the show, whilst also fully protecting Cryptic.

Anyone else agree?

What cannot be trademarked.

What cannot be copyrighted.

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Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents.

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IANAL (I am not a lawyer), but the Official Government sites related to this back this up to the letter. You can trademark a name, which is a legal process different than copyright. Copyright = I create a copyrightable work, publish it, and the copyright is mine. Period. Trademarks require you to register them with the government for a fee for the protection. Based on all this (correct me if I'm wrong) *names* period, end of story, per the US Government, cannot be "copyrighted". Now...



COH EULA

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(c) Member Content. Members can upload to and create content on our servers in various forms, such as in selections you make and characters and items you create for the Game(s), and in bulletin boards and similar user-to-user areas (“Member Content”). By submitting Member Content to or creating Member Content on any area of the Service, you acknowledge and agree that such Member Content is the sole property of NC Interactive. To the extent that NC Interactive cannot claim exclusive rights in Member Content by operation of law, you hereby grant (or you warrant that the owner of such Member Content has expressly granted) to NC Interactive and its related Game Content Providers a non-exclusive, universal, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicenseable right to exercise all rights of any kind or nature associated with such Member Content, and all ancillary and subsidiary rights thereto, in any languages and media now known or not currently known. You shall indemnify and hold NC Interactive and its affiliates harmless from and against any claims by third parties that your Member Content infringes upon, violates or misappropriates any of their intellectual property or proprietary rights.

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Note the bolded bit. Still, IANAL, but it seems like Cryptic put this bit in as their "don't sue us for infringement" fail safe. They claim that they own *EVERYTHING* you see in-game based on this. We forfeit any and all rights based on this. If it's not theirs, they can see it can't be in-game, and thus they remove it. That's been said but I don't think anyone tried to simply spell this out.

Now...

...the only question is the legality of such a provision and/or the enforceability of an EULA like this based on a clickthrough with no actual physical contract or signing away of my rights to Cryptic/NCSoft etc. But again, IANAL. And no one should bother asking Cryptic to comment on that here. If they said "well we don't *really* own it, it's just a C-Y-A provision" they open themselves to even more problems. No one will know for sure unless push came to shove and someone tried to market/publish/profit off their character they created and/or used in the game, and *if* Cryptic went after them for it.

If they use *anything* that appears in the context of the Cryptic "work", they're screwed, Cryptic wins. If I somehow got Image Comics to publish a comic about my heroe's battle that features his origin in Terra Volta, or if Random House publishes a detective novel that features Marcus Cole, I'm screwed.

If I get Image to publish a comic book called Electro Kid, and I made Electro Kid "in-game"... but use *NOTHING* from Cryptic--no Paragon, no nothing from the CoX content--*and* they come after me... that's the real challenge that all this has any relevance to. As far as I can see, but IANAL.

It would be certainly nice for someone from Cryptic to officially address this, but even if they can--and they likely should be *able* to--it would I'm sure need to be vetted past their legal people before CuppaJo could post anything official.

Still, it would be nice for all things to be clarified for our protection... and for the protection of NCSoft, and Cryptic Studios.

Assuming for argumnets' sake that simple names themselves are not copyrightable, what if you had a URL in your "in-game biography" linking to a 3rd party location where people can see that bio?

The rest of your "in-game biography" would simply say:

Go here:

http://blahblah.com/bio




Would that fall thus under Cryptic's "ownership"?

Summary, so far (this seems most logical)...

If I made "Turtle Boy The Slow" as a character, and he was half turtle, half boy, and played him to 50, blah blah...

...and turned around and got Image Comics to publish Turtle Boy The Slow, in all likelihood (conjecture) best case is that TBtS would have to be gone from COH.

Worst Case would be that TBtS: The Movie makes more money than Raimi's Spider-Man, and NCSoft starts a legal war to get their cut.

In other words, don't do stupid clones of existing characters, and do the rest at your own risk.