Firstly. This thread is not for whining about changes, for complaining about special snowflakes, or anything similar. This is for reasoned discussion. This may be the wrong forum and wrong playerbase, but I shall do my best.

With the changes to endgame, there's a lot of things which need testing. But we can't. The costs (which are being discussed elsewhere, not here) are too prohibitive to take up and experiment with new skills. This will lead to problems down the line, in the realms of locating bugs, assessing worth, distributing lines, and just knowing what it does.

There are two possible solutions I've heard so far.

1) Turn on a testing server, and either turn off costs there or give people a bajillion essence.

2) Turn off costs temporarily, possibly also turning off supernumeral power selection (so you can only get free temp powers until the testing is finished).

Either of these would work. The first would restrict people from having everything all at once and possibly ramifications in the real game, whereas the second would probably be simpler (I'm not sure how involved/costly maintaining the testing server is).

Being able to thoroughly test these skills, in addition to just locating bugs, will allow us to give reasonable recommendations for their weights and costs should they be reviewed, allow us to distribute the new lines, etc.

Discuss only the things you should be discussing in this thread!

This would be extremely helpful! Agree!

No

I fully agree that demigods need some way to test everything out and the like.

I just have no faith whatsoever in the average lusternian player to not simply buy every power available to them and then go after the nearest annoying target.

Gods forbid they be allowed to do... umm... exactly what they could do before

Actually I'm thinking more about ascendants. If admin activated this option, you'd probably see all of the ascendants grab every single power available then the orgs wait until the last moment to descend those who aren't keeping it.

Also testing without the supernumeral restrictions would likely lead to complaints as people would only see the captain planet of powers and not the reality.

Potential Ascendant build in case 2 unless there are some that are mutually exclusive:
Planar Quickening, Knowledge Awareness, Beauteous Thought, Peaceful Companion, Quiet Mind, Compatriot of Chaos, Dispersal, Pure Soul, Sanctity of Body, Breath of Life, Ur'Life, Death Aura, Fear Aura, Thunder Clap, Havoc Cry, Destruction, Even-Handed Blessing, Judicious Presence, Aegis, Affinity, Second Tradeskill, Divine Fire, Zap, Endowment of Thought, Endowment of Life, Endowment of Vanity and Refresh

Demigods are not too bad, but the testing should still not be conducted on the live game if the costs are going to be removed there's no reality to the situation and other players are just going to come here to complain about how demigods are still op or the like.

Plus test server also has the benefit of concentrating everyone into a separate area so when they stop actually testing it becomes easier to identify an end rather than dragging on in-game.

This is the wisest solution.

Not quite an endgame player yet, but if I were, I'd really like a test server. Not only is this useful for the players, but it is also a great tool to aid the developers in further balancing.

I'm not sure it really costs them anything to run it, since as far as I know it's a spare computer Charune had laying around. That's not to say it's easy, but I don't think it's going to be money out of their pocket to do.

The test server is always up if you know the IP address, and it's updated regularly.

We still need powers to be cheaper or have more essence to actually test things, Furien.

Would you know the IP address? Every time they say the test server is up they point to charune.no-ip.org, but that one isn't up right now...

I can't say if it's -the- official test server, but it's what we used for monk development: (Alright nevermind I shouldn't post this without admin permission.)

Only time I use it is when I want to run around getting attack messages of organization loyals, for in-game book writing purposes.

Sweet, that one works. Thanks!

Is the test server still up? I can't seem to access it again (either the old one or the new one Sior posted).

Neither can I!
I was still working on cults. Ugh.

The test server is back up and operational. A certain player spamming to get untrapped errors knocked it off.