Sorry for my late reply, but I'm gonna copy-paste a rather extensive (and well-written) message I found on the Steam forum. Many thanks to Doctor3D for his analysis, he expresses exactly what I've been experiencing.
"I wish they would go back to the early access model where you could play the game as they make changes - I'm sure I'd have a lot more to say and play it a lot more if I could provide some actual feedback on the game as they are working on it. Health bars for example - the moment they would have put that code in the game and EA players tested it - they would have got immediate feedback on whether it was accepted by a majority and what they liked or didn't like about them - but now - they will have had so many changes to the game since A16 game out that any real focused feedback on each and every change is going to impossible.
By doing so they also break your saves every day meaning people can't actually properly test many features because they have to constantly start over. You also kill your modding community as if that was their cycle very few people would bother creating mods.
Using health bars as an example (just as an example, because there's so many changes) it takes at least some amount of time for a person to code those, art for them, tweak them, etc - so if they go through all of that - only just to possibly have them removed or completely revamped later on - then that's just a waste of time. Instead - they could have started putting them in and we applied feedback immediately and they could make immediate (one-time) changes as we tested it.
They aren't planning to remove them, but like most other features in the game they will be removable or tweakable so that they say might only show on bosses.
Sleepers back in A16 - if we could have had true early access to that as it was being implemented we could have certainly provided better feedback - instead they will have to backtrack and rework those as well. There not even 'broken' they are just badly implemented and very simple things (while they were actively focused on them and everything about them was fresh on the dev's mind) could have made them better (such as frequency, placement, quantity per building type, etc)
Again though nothing would have changed. They would have added them in, gotten the same feedback they got in A16 and made changes in A17. The only difference is those changes would have been part of a smaller patch forcing us to start over again. The same amount of work on TFP would have been done.
So while they may argue that giving us early access and allowing us to provide feedback AS things are being made slows them down - I think, in the long run all the backtracking, removing and re-editing after months of work that they have had to do since they stopped giving us more frequent insights into the game (A14-ish)- is slowing them down further in the long run and the game (while still great) won't reach the heights it could with solid player feedback.
Everything they removed would have been removed ANYWAYS whether they removed it in a small update or a large update, so their is no difference in their work and its not slowing them.
They drop a huge gigantic amount of content on each update now and say something to the effect of "It's like a new game!!!" - which to me, is the opposite of what I want. I don't want a huge, gimongous amount of content that changes things all at once - the feedback on it is chaos and nothing can get balanced or implemented as well. There's too many things that needs tweaks since A13\A14 - far too many - some are so small (in comparison) that it's not even worth mentioning at this point - but it could have been worth it - while they were actually physically doing them.
The entire point of alpha is to do those large sweeping changes. Then in beta you start working on your small tweaks, fine tune your balance, etc. The entire point of alpha is to get all your core systems in place and working before you start to tweak and streamline.
Personally, I just look at this game as Early Access in name only - it doesn't hold true to the spirit of what early access actually means. I have not been able to actually see and play the game as it develops - just huge drops of content at a time - with a chaos of feedback to sort through.
As someone with over a decade in the software industry your opinion is just wrong. This is the very definition of EA and you have quite literally been able to see and play the game as it develops. EA doesn't mean you get access to every build they ever do. You've been playing each Alpha as they add more content and when it goes to beta you will be playing that.
Radiated zombies is another big one that bothers me while I was siting here thinking about their process. I personally don't like how they are implemented - I think there are too much of them. I think they break immersion. They make looting simple houses a chore with low reward. I think they do have a place in the game - but how they are used now is excessive. (to be fair though, this is a fairly simple change - but if you balance the entire game around their implementation then changing just them makes things out of wack)
The game hasn't been balanced at all though. Every veteran player knows that the non modded game is waaay to easy and we mod it to make it harder. That type of stuff comes during the beta though.
I prefer to play this game and offer feedback as its being developed. I don't want to just play and play and play until I completely burn out on the game. I want to enjoy the finished product and I want to help realize what it could be (As the Early Access mission statement states) - so I'll play it again in A17 - drop what little feedback I can manage to get through the chaos and that'll be that.
Then don't play and play until you get burned out, no one is holding a gun to your head. if they were constantly restarting your saves because of patches EVERYONE would get burned out and they would stop testing. You can still offer feedback and we've had massive discussions every update on big changes. The dev's do listen to feedback and have made many changes based on it.
We have become bug testers more than anything else - we shouldn't have to only do just the bad, unfun parts like bug reports - there should be feedback as well."
Most of EA IS bug testing. It's one of the most critical parts of software development. Also our feedback will be much more vital during beta when you start balancing the game.
Also hate to break it to you but 99% of people have no clue how to design a software or whats actually fun. Case in point, we have people in the PvP thread here actually saying they should add in a more focused PvP mode and IGNORE any form of balance just to have it because balance isn't important.
Think about that for a second.......
We have people posting that they should add super powers, laser eye beams, were wolfs, vampires, etc to the game. Alien abductions, plasma weapons, zombie sex slaves, etc.
Just because TFP doesn't listen or appear to listen to every idea you have doesn't mean they aren't listening to feedback. Just because some people don't like hp bars doesn't mean they aren't listening to those people. It just means they also have their own ideas and they aren't going to scrap all their ideas just because a few people on a forum with no background in software development have a different idea.
