In short, Temple Shielding has not (even without considering the bugs we encountered) achieved what we hoped it would on ZZ21. With this in mind, we've decided to not release Temple Shielding on live at all. This is regrettable, as we did spend some time on the development, and at first wanted to try and return to the drawing board and use some of the design and development elements we'd invested time in making, but unfortunately, nothing really fits, and we don't want to introduce a reworked mechanic just for the sake of it.
Thanks for dismissing temple shielding. I can understand that it might be regrettable for the people who developed the feature but it really did not improve the game experience, and it was obvious from the start that it would not work for the Large Tempel stage at all - even before we knew that the shielded phases would last so long. It would be helpful for all (players and team) if you discussed planned developments with your players before implementing them.
I still think that Olympus worlds would be more attractive if the first temple stage did not start so early in the game. Of course small Beta worlds (and zz21 was a very small one) cannot be a benchmark for live worlds, but the increased defences of Large Temples and Olympus also cannot work towards more competition and a livelier gameplay. There are many small markets and worlds out there, and with NPC defenses that strong, alliances must focus on building (and sparing) their troops for that purpose only - and that´s boring. While the defenses of Olympus were decreased with each jump, the Large Temple defense stayed the same, thus excluding smaller alliances from even trying to take one. And even worse: Alliances seeing that they don´t have a chance to clear a Large Temple or Olympus might stop playing - and avoid playing on Olympus worlds in the future.
Considering that initially temple shielding was introduced in order to counterbalance (too) strong PvE elements in Olympus worlds, it made no sense to me that at the same time those PvE elements were strengthened even more on zz21.
Unfortunately, the announced "next batch of changes" will be implemented without prior presentation and discussion again, and that´s a pity.
The reason is we've been working on our next batch of changes, which we're sure you won't be revolted by
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If we interpret that sentence correctly and you are planning to introduce a revolt version of the Olympus endgame, the input of experienced revolt players would be even more valuable beforehand, since that´s no easy task, even under the best circumstances.