Taking some inspiration of how moments of certain games feel is my aim, not to copy everything about any one game. 7 Days has always been a survival game with RPG elements. It will never be a full on RPG with lofty dialogue choices or huge character interactions with NPCs. But it can have some awesome character progression and meaningful builds if we get it right.
As for 17 I can get excited about a new system we add even if its not that great at the time. Technology excites me. I was excited I could make a whole bunch of new perks without needing 20 programmers 2 years to do it. I had a framework that was very powerful and the sky was the limit. That was my excitement. Unfortunately the new framework broke a lot of stuff that worked ok before, like diseases, weather survival (not great but not horrid), and we didn't have a place for schematics yet. I did the perk system of 17 in under two months, with content lock and I've been working hard ever since it dropped improving it.
So now it feels fully integrated with the game instead of a replacer of stuff people used to do the old way. Its the best of both worlds IMO and 18 will be a big hit. The testers are confirming it is great again, and we still have a lot of balancing and fine tuning to do yet.
I get the skepticism, but 17 wasn't the first dud alpha we shipped. 13 was a dud and we made 14 awesome. Any time you bring in a ton of new features it takes time to work out the kinds. The new harvest system of 13 was cool tech, but the game wasn't balanced. Same with perks in 17. Amazing power there, but poor balance and distribution. 18 is 1000% better IMO.