Blind ex trials and savages should, and only should, be done in a static with others that agreed to do it blind. You are wasting 7 other people’s time if you are doing an ex blind.

It's a lot of searching (Google, a custom database, IEEE database, etc.), IP law knowledge, and legal writing. You're basically the other side of patent prosecution. The inventors/lawyers want an invention as broad as possible, and your job is to get them to narrow the invention down as much as possible by searching for references and persuasively writing that teach their invention.

There's a very high turn over rate. Not alot of people can handle the quota or the nature of the work.

It is rough. My academy group started out over 10 years ago. More than 90% of them are gone and it's just me and two others. We had 6 new examiners in the past year and all of them left because they couldn't meet production or didn't like the work. There are quotas to meet every bi-week.

I'm a GS-14 and make 145k a year. The work-life probably beats most companies. I have flex hours, where my schedule is 8 hours between whenever I feel like waking up and whenever I feel like leaving. I have been working from home for the past 7 years. Because of my GS level, I'm very independent and rarely talk to my supervisor unless he needs something. I will have a federal pension and a very good 401k offered by the government. I live in a completely different state than DC and have not been in the office since 2017 for a mandatory meetup, which happens every 5-6 years.

While my pay is no way near what I would have earned in the private industry with my education background/experience, but the benefits probably outweigh a higher end salary.

I would honestly have left years ago because I don't like the work (it doesn't feel fulfilling). But, it's hard to revert back to a work in the office from 9-5pm job and commuting. I hate commuting more than anything in the world.

I examine computer security/network stuff. Majority of the patent applications are from technology companies or startups. I do get patent applications that are just so obvious, but it's not as common as in other subject matter areas.

Patent Examiner

https://i.redd.it/sw7ursd2oqg21.png

Pretty sure a CEO still has influence to what type of game design should be included. While Kotick might not personally review everything Ion comes up with, the direction of the game is probably: “Design the game to forcibly keep players subscribed”.

Endwalker comes out at the end of Nov. Most game devs (or reasonable devs) wouldn’t want to release their game around the time another major game of the same genre is going to be released. Both are MMOs and both share the intended audience. There should be a few weeks of buffer pre-/post-release.

It’s the same with major movie releases.

The cash shop in form of tokens and prevalent boosting that Blizzard is not stopping is a pay-2-win model. You might not see it, but whales are buying 100 (or maybe 1000s) of dollars worth of tokens for gold to buy boosts. Look at any other game with a cash shop. The whales majority support the game more than the subscriptions as a cash shop gives them an unlimited amount of buying power.

You can only buy one subscription per user per month. Maybe 2-3 if you are one of those multi-boxers.

It’s the same as those who say “good round” after a 100-0 win. But then fail to say “good round” when they lose the next one or a “GG”when the whole game ends with them losing a reversal.

Those companies behind the DMCA are millions times the worth of xQC. I don't think he has that much influence to Twitch over those companies.

Fel rush is soft capped at 20. Eye beam is square root damage.

Abilities such as flame patch on fire mage or chakrams on survival are truly uncapped.

Being ahead has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is simply you being ahead with a chance of finishing. The disadvantage is that your are experimenting and providing information for those behind. It comes down to better execution for those behind to catch up.

Long time Nicker here. I’ve been a Nigel thornberry main since ‘97.

In the US, you typically accrue vacation time the longer you work. You typically get like 5-10 days of vacation time earned over a period of one year. Usually for a new worker, you can’t really take a week long vacation until after 6-12 months of working

I still use rio for the timed history of runs and for seeing main/alt scores. They are more of a deciding factor of who I invite. If you had ton of timed runs in the past, I’ll invite you over someone with only a very high score but just ran each dungeons once.

But they're not "overperforming" this tier. Caster-wise, they are neck and neck in boss damage with demo locks. SP in 9.1 aren't like in the last tier where they were miles ahead of not just casters, but every single DPS.

Really hope that none of the guilds going for WF does mythic Sylvannas off stream. Any other bosses are fine.

Somehow it would feel like playing against an opponent in Starcraft using map hack.

People always ignore the scope of P2W.

Like some people would categorize PoE (buying stash tabs) as the same P2W category as the Chinese version of Blade and Soul (straight up buying the highest gear tiers with cash), or boosting in WoW (buying achievements, gear, etc. with token gold). \

Player harassment is taken much more seriously in FF14 than pretty much in any MMO. Even things like talking shit in chat about someone's DPS based on your ACT meter gets you a 3-day suspension.

My old static member was permabanned after 3 strikes.

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This isn't a "streamer privilege" shit either. It was just blatantly shown on stream. Players get suspended and banned all the time outside of botting/rmt. Player griefing/harassment is a big one

It's not easy to change a game engine. It's like asking to have a central nervous system and muscle transplant with another person. They can make minor improvements on it, which seem to be what they are doing.

Nothing in the alpha or beta will be carried onto launch.

If they had to divide the queues into solo and premades, it’ll end up dividing the player base. I would rather just keep solo queues. At least then, I can play when my friends aren’t available.

So, it’s more like a casino? A “pay-for-a-chance-to-win” type of deal. This is similar to Black Desert Online’s manner of P2W, where there are two options:

1) There is an option to straight up buy costumes and sell them on the market for silver, in which you can use that silver to buy gear. But you are capped on the number of costumes you can sell in Black Desert every week.

2) Buying mats to help enchanting for a CHANCE of getting upgrades. You are still limited by supplies in the market.