Brainbot wrote:

Laser Swords are not usually a problem. The specific lightsaber sound effects might be more of an issue. Lucas arts was never that litigious when it came to their property but disney is so I dunno.

Yeah we might not want to kick the sleeping giant (a.k.a. Disney) with something that looked/sounded way too close.

I'm sure you could get away with something like what CoH had already but I'd steer clear of showing anything with "shiny cylindrical" handles (especially with the blade off) or any "blades" that were just straight glowing beams of energy. Anything overtly "blade shaped" or just maybe physical blades that "glowed" would likely be fine.

And in case this wasn't obvious the words "light" and "saber" should probably never appear together anywhere in the game.

"Energy swords" of different types should be perfectly fine - we see those all over the place - but combining one with the specific Star Wars lightsaber sound effect could be going too far with it I think. I'd prepare to get a letter from Disney in that case.

Foradain wrote:

"Force Blade" is my go-to term, making it an outgrowth of force field technology. But the "Energy Blade" mentioned above is better for its genericity.

I've always been a fan of "Laser sword" myself

Wolfgang8565 wrote:

Cinnder wrote:

I'd like to see CoT be its own world with its own ideas as much as possible, rather than copying elements from other franchises.

I agree

On the other hand there are plenty of examples of generic "energy swords" sprinkled throughout sci-fi so there's no reason CoT couldn't have anything even vaguely like it. After all it's not like George Lucas actually invented the idea of a sword with a blade made of "light/energy" instead of metal. Like most things he "borrowed" that idea too.

I'd easily agree it might be a bit lazy to copy Star Wars lightsabers 100% into CoT, but I honestly wouldn't mind seeing something like the example from CoH that was attached to the first post in this thread.

I just hope they don't provide an overabundance of costumes/weapons/powers from other properties that would easily entice players to cosplay every character imaginable rather than create their own. In COH, I rarely saw someone playing as an X-Man and it was definitely a bit funny when I did and truthfully one of my mains was a Storm knock off, but I'll be a hypocrite and say that on COT, I would much rather be on a team with all original characters with their own backstories than on a team with a Jedi, a knock off wolverine, and an anime character. It takes away from the sense that my character is on a serious mission to save an unlucky citizen and replaces it with a feeling of walking the halls of some random unknown comic con.

notears wrote:

Foradain wrote:
"Force Blade" is my go-to term, making it an outgrowth of force field technology. But the "Energy Blade" mentioned above is better for its genericity.
I've always been a fan of "Laser sword" myself

Well, to me "laser sword" is a specific kind of energy blade while energy blade can have many more types of energy, like psionic, plasma, dark, light, generic magic, even "standard" thermal energy (fire and ice).

In general:
The big advantage to MWM here will be the number of shapes they can give it, that is effectively every shape they can give a metal blade plus probably a few more. Heck they don't need to limit themselves to blades only, they could incorporate effectively any kind of melee weapon.

Though practically speaking it would probably be easier to have energy be a "material choice" for some weapons (mostly melee) rather than putting "energy weapons" as its own weapon category. At least for those that still have a physical hilt or "grip point", like the one in OP.

Brainbot wrote:

This is the same reason CoH went to court with Marvel.

Marvel actually had their people invade CoH with knock-offs, just so they could take CoH to court for copyright infringement.

*rolls eyes*

Marvel did both-- Claim they could not delay a lawsuit because if they did it would/might count against them. Which is a valid argument.
They also used characters they created themselves in CoH to substantiate their argument, which was lame. As this made their claim to the court appear to be without merit. This was probably why the judge in the case threw out a good portion of Marvel's claims. NCSoft settled the rest.

They could've just used my storm knock off character. The likeness was pretty damn close, and I played her for years lol. She only got generatized(?) once and I fixed her right back with no problems. Not that I wanted them to win hehehe

Posting just because....

[youtube]MIFVlVLrrUs[/youtube]

RottenLuck wrote:

How about Star Trek? I made a CoH star trek ensign red shirt named Camron Fodder aka Ensine Fodder or more to the point Cannon Fodder! He used the blaster power and I played with the colors to make it look like a Phaser Rifle.

In CO, we made an SG called "Star Fleet Away Team". Uniforms were made to resemble those from ST:TOS. Ray gun animations were likewise chosen to resemble type two phasers. In character we referred to the "Orbital Phaser Strike". Backgrounds referred to their unnamed ship finding a strange alternate Earth, "the Planet of the Capes." Team security was provided by "Petty Officer Trid'sek", who had allegedly been kicked off of Vulcan for excessive perkyness. And if you rearranged those letters in her name to get "red skirt", you're not too far off. ^_^

Alas, SFAT fell to lack of content. :(

Gundam called them Beam Sabers. There was even a "lower tech" version called Heat Sabers which were a solid pole heated really high (glows in visible light) temperatures that MELTED their way through enemy mecha rather than "cutting" through them. The Heat Saber was a slower weapon to use, since it took longer to "melt" through a mecha than it did to "cut" through them, but aside from that they were just about as effective (particularly if your faction couldn't manufacture Beam Saber technology).

Sword Art Online II had Kirito using an Energy Sword, although people in Gun Gale Online called them Photon Blades or Beam Sabers instead of their proper in-game name (and basically no one used them because they were melee range weapons in a game with automatic rifles and submachineguns).

[img]https://68.media.tumblr.com/dd1a1e92774eec0c184075fb9d40872f/tumblr_o5uab7OUSA1tpri36o1_500.gif[/img]

If you want to get scientifically/technologically accurate, you can just simply call them Plasma Blades, since that's basically what they are. [b]BECAUSE SCIENCE[/b] ...

[youtube]d8ejiEEun9s[/youtube]

I've now seen 400 different ways to call a light saber, i'm sure they can pick from any of them and create a different sound effect. Problem solved.

Star Swords ;P

Another name could be Holo Blade

Grimfox wrote:

I was going to say that you could give it any other shape than straight and tubular/conical (depending on your depiction) but SW:rebels recently made a non-straight blade canon, in the form of the black electro patterned mandalorian lightsaber (forget who's it was originally) that has appeared in the show. I think by doing that they weakened their IP rights. Essentially they have now made canon that lightsabers can take different forms which steps beyond the bounds of original lightsabers and starts to touch on other energy blades from other sources of sci-fi.
All that said. I'm not hear to be a Jedi or Sith or Force user.(captial F) I'm here to be a Hero. I've got another game where I can be a hero.

I presume you mean the darksaber ? Vizsla weapon ? I don't think Vizsla was even a force user and he used a saber.

EDIT: The Darksaber I believe showed up in the Clone Wars animation if i remember correctly.