PC A little peak of enthusiasm, but then a steep fall into disappointment...

I'm way into mid game (past 35 day horde) with quite a lot of different equipment and most (if not all) workstations placed in my base. Also, i've built a decent horde defense base, which withstood two hordes so far, with me getting minimal damage. I've got an abundance of ammo, using pistols and bows, but for HN i also use a T3 machine gun to use up some of that ammo i stockpile. I got 5 full stacks (250) of feathers so far, probably due to the last 2 HN containing lots of vultures.

One important thing to note about performance. After you start the game and get into any world, change the video quality settings at least once, even if to go back to the previous. I noticed that when you change one option and click apply, the FPS magically rises up. I had some serious lag at one point after entering my world and decided to use the old "change setting" routine (as it helped before). It turns out it (maybe?) flushes some memory/settings/cache/whatever and the FPS rises up to the regular they should have. Even if you have decent FPS on startup (20-30) it's good to do this, as the numbers could still scale up by 10-20. When i had that lag, it downed to 5-15 to come up back to 30-45 (my regular).

 
I'm way into mid game (past 35 day horde) with quite a lot of different equipment and most (if not all) workstations placed in my base. Also, i've built a decent horde defense base, which withstood two hordes so far, with me getting minimal damage. I've got an abundance of ammo, using pistols and bows, but for HN i also use a T3 machine gun to use up some of that ammo i stockpile. I got 5 full stacks (250) of feathers so far, probably due to the last 2 HN containing lots of vultures.
One important thing to note about performance. After you start the game and get into any world, change the video quality settings at least once, even if to go back to the previous. I noticed that when you change one option and click apply, the FPS magically rises up. I had some serious lag at one point after entering my world and decided to use the old "change setting" routine (as it helped before). It turns out it (maybe?) flushes some memory/settings/cache/whatever and the FPS rises up to the regular they should have. Even if you have decent FPS on startup (20-30) it's good to do this, as the numbers could still scale up by 10-20. When i had that lag, it downed to 5-15 to come up back to 30-45 (my regular).
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Yeah the graphics options are bugged out and has been since like A17. I'm glad someone is finally noticing this. I was going to write up a bug report but had a feeling no one would actually listen so why waiste my time u know. But yeah u are right, apply graphic settings or else u get fps drops

 
Everybody says archery is worthless due to day 1 bow. Just deal until you find a good bow or even better a crossbow. Early game, its your silenced weapon. Late game, explosive bolts are better than even frag rockets. They do not damage blocks, and fire immediately (grenades are not so great at night when Z are running everywhere). 70 explosive bolts can take out an entire horde.

Archery is the shizz.

 
Cant move for feathers most of the time, vultures give plenty and iron arrows come up in loot very regularly. Never really use guns ,bows are still fine apart from the missing the head shot from 4 feet away syndrome lol.

 
Yeah the graphics options are bugged out and has been since like A17. I'm glad someone is finally noticing this. I was going to write up a bug report but had a feeling no one would actually listen so why waiste my time u know. But yeah u are right, apply graphic settings or else u get fps drops
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Don't know much about how the problems with graphics options evolved, but i am sure they are contantly reworking things on this front. At the beginning of A18 (still in EXP i think) there was a brightness bug, where you had to change Reflections Quality in any way to not get oversaturated view on everything really. It's gone now.

I can understand this can be overwhelming. My initial thought when my FPS dropped radically (for the first time so low and when no updates went in) was of sheer dissapointment. I walked around trying to find the source, basically unable to pinpoint if it was a POI, a group of Zs or something else. That was until i changed the settings. On the other hand, it could have been a spontanious problem, which was resolved with changing the Video Quality settings.

I think TFP should go the long way around, determine what changing the Video Quality settings resets or clears and find every source of a potential problem. This is not the usual "we got a bug from point X, let's investigate area around X", but more of a "we know the symptomts and let's reverse engineer what causes it". This could take A LOT of time and effort, but i think it could solve most of the problems the game currently has with dropping FPS.

EDIT: I'm deep into mid-game and still enjoy shooting Zs with a bow, especially as i got my hands on a compound bow. Deeply satisfying, not to mention all basic and some mid-tier Zs get headless before they can approach me. Always liked how you can shoot arrows from big distances in this game.

 
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Everybody says archery is worthless due to day 1 bow. Just deal until you find a good bow or even better a crossbow. Early game, its your silenced weapon. Late game, explosive bolts are better than even frag rockets. They do not damage blocks, and fire immediately (grenades are not so great at night when Z are running everywhere). 70 explosive bolts can take out an entire horde.
Archery is the shizz.
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I was testing a game with 20 active zombies. I had to use 3~4 explosive bolts/arrows per horde. They do damage blocks but at minimum amounts. I am not very sure how good they are though. Perhaps it's because I wasn't using mods on each bow...

 
After the first week, the problems with feathers go away, of course, let alone by riding the roofs of POIs or by occasional vulture visits.

My balance shift recommendation only refers to the initial days, mainly the first two, where you have multiple pressing knapsack problems to solve. And it applies to newcomers, mainly. As soon as you adapt to the circumstances (as for example with a dedicated hunting and searching party, or if you know the right roofs of the right buildings), the problem gets alleviated.

The entry into the game - the first few days - should be tailored for newcomers at normal difficulty levels. Hardcore enthusiasts should be able to change their difficulty level by options at game start. As far as i remember (till Alpha 13), this was always the case. I, too, made a playthrough on Alpha 15 with loot abundance set to 25%. That gave nearly the same loot regarding feathers as is now the default case with A18.

I'm not able to see that the funpimps wanted the overall game difficulty set higher: The same time they bolstered the gun ammo found in loot to a multitude of what was normal the versions before. IF you have fun using guns, this surely will make the game a lot easier for you.

What i do is: I have the impression that the funpimps somehow wanted to mimic the rules of some popular mods, where guns and ammo loot are by far overpowered in relation to bows.

While i can live with that -at least after some adaption to it -, i think newcomers should be taken into account by balancing.

 
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