I do not see why food has to be so important at the beginning of the game and something you can forget a few days later.
Because priorities change over time. If you had to think all the time about food, you couldn't think about building a good defense against the horde. In the weeks after the first horde, you'll have to build up your defenses and develop strategies to deal with the horde as it grows stronger and stronger.
You also want to explore the environment and improve your own equipment.
At the beginning of the game there may be abundant hunting but the zombies are supposed to be eating the animals and should start to become scarce.
That would be illogical. The zombies weren't created when your character woke up, they were there before.
In addition, most zombies are too slow to become dangerous to the animal anyway, and it's also the case that some more aggressive animals would actively fight the zombies and not just let themselves be eaten.
The same goes for the nests could be plentiful at first to help the player and then go scarce for not having an easy resource.
That will hardly be possible. The nests will be generated when the world is created and not when the player is ready to enter. You could of course reduce the number of eggs a player finds the higher the gamestage is.
This would force you to migrate to agriculture.
Agriculture is not equally suitable for every playing style. Especially nomads have little interest in it.
Which would be nice to have to protect and that will be spoiled if you do not collect it on time.
That would be a big problem on multiplayer servers. There the time continues to run even if the player is not logged in.
The possibility for animals and zombies to trample down plants was already promised for A19 or later. From this point on it is necessary to protect the garden.
The system of global precipitation could play a factor of unpredictability that would cause crops from all over the world to be spoiled by certain conditions. This would force the players to look for the scant hunt, pawn a kidney to a merchant or survive with the few cans of food.
If you're not completely stupid, you're naturally stockpiling to be prepared. But that is exactly what is criticized. It is criticized that the player has the possibility to build up supplies and then no longer has to search every kitchen cupboard for food.
All this with the optional spoilage would make players who already like the game like this would continue the same for them.
That's not said. The game has many aspects and individual players are more interested in some aspects than in others.
Your interest is clearly in the survival aspect. I am more interested in building and mining. Others are more interested in scavenging.
I do not pretend that food is something extremely complicated to collect, I just want it to be something that you can never neglect and that always has a value.
This is the wrong game for that. Here the zombies clearly play the leading role.
