It is fun for you to potentially find something cool or useful after killing a zombie, and that is an option that TFP has given you up to this point. The point of the meat argument is that TFP chose not to give options in that case, and they now are choosing not to revoke the looting corpses option now. Yes, it is a sandbox game (as you mention below), but at every step TFP gets to decide which options are available. They have inserted and removed those options throughout the process as they deemed fit. As you say, having options is good in certain scenarios but not all of them. TFP has decided that this is a certain scenario in which it is not good. You disagree, and that's fine. You can't pretend though that your way is the only way or that the devs are beholden to leave all options open in this scenario. You grant them that power elsewhere, and it's inconsistent not to grant it to them here.
No, it's not fun
for me, it's fun for a very great number of players that up until now were happily looting zombies without a worry in the world for the past 16 alphas, and now the developers have removed that fun from the game, thus making many people mad and thus starting #LootGate.
Yes, TFP can decide to do whatever they want with their game. No, that doesn't mean all their decisions are good, and I don't remember saying my way was the only way or that the devs are beholden to leave all options open, but I can certainly speak my reasons why I'm against their judgement and focus on fixing things that aren't broken, and I'm certainly not the only one doing so.
Those who would choose to kill them all will do so because it is fun in itself to them. Those who would choose to avoid them all will do so because it is fun in itself to them. The problem is those middle ground people, and that's where incentive comes in. Here's the thing about incentive though: the devs aren't responsible for creating it. If it is part of the devs' vision to make players kill zombies, they can do that without incentive (namely, "the stick" rather than the carrot) even as they could use incentive if they wanted to do so. If the devs are not interested in making players kill zombies, then those middle ground people will have to find the incentive themselves. If you think that killing zombies should be part of the game, then that will be your incentive to kill them sometimes.
Of course they are responsible for creating incentive, otherwise players end up asking themselves why bother with certain mechanics?. There are many things in the game that have always bothered many players because they rendered important aspects of it pointless.
Up until a certain point, starving to death and dying of thirst weren't a thing; not kidding, it didn't actually matter if your bars remained empty back in previous alphas. What was the point of food and water?
Infection and dysentery have always been quite flawed. No one even knew infection could actually kill you, because it took no less than 7 whole days, and by that time everyone had a stock of antibiotics; and dysentery was so ridiculously easy to cure no one knew it had a 2nd stage. What's the point of those buffs?
Many people want food spoilage because there's no point in farming or hunting anymore if you have piles upon piles of meat lying around.
The blunderbuss... well... we don't talk about the blunderbuss.
What I'm saying is that the developers are quite responsible for the incentive the players get in the game. Without incentive, there's little purpose. It's the reason why there are horde nights, because otherwise having a base is useless. Sure, you could build for the fun of it, but there's no more purpose than that. Same applies here, sure, you could kill zombies just for the fun of killing zombies and nothing else, but that's the only purpose to it; and sure, many people are ok with that, but many others find it disappointing, especially when you could favour everyone like all the previous alphas.
I didn't say that killing zombies to find stuff was necessarily far-fetched or unrealistic, only that it isn't necessary in itself. The devs could have chosen to maintain that part and the game would be entirely reasonable. As it is, this new way is reasonable as well. (I will throw you a bone that the new "backpack" method is not my favorite, but it's no different than bags of animal fat dropping on the ground when you are carrying too much stuff while harvesting an animal.)
And that might put you away from a source of easy looting. It's a survival game, a game of hard choices.
You did say that, immersion wise, no one would risk their life to loot corpses. I argued that given the theme of the game, it was plausible, that's where the argument came from. Sure, it isn't necessary, but they're entirely removing a whole aspect of the game. It's just reasonable that people would be bummed about it.
