Yes, and it's not impossible to balance either, but they really need this new system to be tested in isolation first.
It has to be assumed that the game is set at least 5 years after the nukes fell because of the clear skies. During that time the most radioactive materials, those with the shortest half-lives, will have decayed becoming harmless and those with longer will have settled out of the water. It would be more dangerous digging in the dirt or walking around kicking up dust.
More bells and whistles would be nice, but the Zs were deliberately dumbed down because players were complaining about how smart they were. If I'm not mistaken, you're more likely to get those really dumb Zs if your cpu is busy doing something else when it comes time to update their pathing. I see them a lot more when people are streaming or recording than I ever do when I've only got the game running alone.
The fact that they're Zs already assumes that they're the product of some crazy mutations and making the blocks any more difficult for the Zs to destroy would make the Zs trivial to defeat. Narrator: He said knowing they are already trivial to defeat.
Sure, just increase the resolution by using much smaller voxels and increase the overhead by a factor of at least 10, or maybe just allow voxels to overlap, and then figure out how to do so without z fighting etc. I barely know wtf I'm talking about here, but I do know that if it was that easy someone would've already done it.
There is a limit to how fast the game can load new voxels, if you want to add player interaction while moving then any vehicle will have to be slowed down to a player's run speed. I mean at some point they could add a non voxel imposter layer that they could swap in and out for those action sequences. but I don't think they're going to.
Well since you can already set up enough traps to completely defeat the horde without lifting a finger to the trigger what would be the point beyond visual spectacle? Not that I'm against visual spectacle, but I think you're underestimating how powerful the existing traps are.
Typically I don't play vanilla, usually darkness falls. But you are right that in vanilla the zeds and game play with traps are pretty trivial and unchallenging. Hell, half the time in vanilla the zeds are more interested in a tree and beating on it than they are me. . .not sure why that was ever done. I do agree that zeds should be pretty much dumb across the board in regards to thinking, but if we use current media as an example of what could be considered zed staple behavior, they will always choose the path of least resistance to their meal before randomly just banging on stuff for no reason.
So far as rads go, Chernobyl is a good example to look at, five or so years isn't going to do much for radioactive decay, but that's a rather mute point when I am pretty sure radiation isn't even a real threat in vanilla so far as I've noticed.
I can understand mutations, like on the behemoths for example, having denser bones and possible thickened skin and what not, but plan zed marry who's barely keeping her head on shouldn't have the same outstanding mutations and be falling apart and breaking through something which would obviously break her trying.
So far as deco, I do understand that changing the block/item type is difficult in a voxel based game, though not impossible with c#. It's more of a factor of getting the two different types of things to work nice together given the diverse coding. But it should be doable.
I have noticed the game has greatly improved on voxel loading, and I personally have no issues driving at full speed across the map, unlike previous alpha's where you could fly off the map due to loading. So, I don't think adding in ground vehicle features should be an issue other than the slow zed spawn in times, though even with that I haven't notice much of an issue and see them poping up a good distance before I get to them. Flying however is a different story, there is still a good amount of lag with that when high up and traveling, probably due to the sheer amount of what needs to be loaded at once.
So far as traps, yeah, they are kind of just nice bells and whistles, but a variety allows people to make up their defenses in unique and different ways. A wall trap that closes and squishes zeds would be a good one to put in to protect halls. Simply tossing up a bunch of turrets, electric fences, and maybe some barbed wire can get old fast and it's to the point that defensive bases begin to fall into a small hand full of effective designs. I was quite excited with the introduction of electricity, and had hoped there would be all sorts of neat things. . .and was left disappointed. A flame thrower trap behind bars or a chain link fence could prove effective. There are of course the dart traps, but so far as I can tell they aren't terribly effective, though they are quite neat with seat up if you can maintain a constant power supply and ammo. Or a floor trap which launches zeds away from the base, but this would only work if zeds actually fall dmg (well more than they do now) and didn't rage and begin slamming what ever tree they land against. There are some very simple traps which could be used that would offer a host of options and improvements with out over powering the player. I mean, at the end of the day 7dtd is more of a tower defense and building game than anything else.
I wouldn't mind seeing a host of new zeds, animals (ones that don't look like half animated blocks, sorry, the animal models are horrid as are their animations), and other mutated things in the wild. Though, that may or may not be in line with the funpimps vision forward? Walking through the woods and being attacked by some odd half zed mutated tree thing would be pretty horrifying if you didn't notice it till you were on it.
In the end I'm just tossing things out there.
but seriously, it just makes a jar of 
