So unless you have godlike skills of a degree that I have never seen and never even heard of before, you might be talking about knowing how to avoid danger.
I tend to not pull all zombies at once. But even when I happen to pull more than I want to, I seldom die. Not counting my 50 hours in the game I usually die once (or twice with bad luck) per game and play on average 70-100 days (with 60 minutes each) per game. Even in my A15 game on highest difficulty with zombies running day and night and my base next to the central city I died once (due to an accidently missclick) in somewhat over 80 days with (if I remember correctly) 90 minutes a day (yes I had longer days, because I expected it to be more challenging).
Zombies aren't the challenge in the game. Not doing stupid things are the challenge. Almost all of my deaths after I knew all mechanics were due to doing stupid things.
For example is there a POI that has a zombie bear. I would not go there with only a bow and a club.
Why though? Clear the zombies from a range where the bears won't trigger and afterwards they are easily manageable. Use obstacles to your advantage like you would do in real life.
the problem of having a gun with enough ammo on the first day exactly arrived with the release of A17. It was no problem before.
But before A17 the bow was overpowered af. Clubs and sledgehammers even more. In A18 I'll have to find a gun to be as strong as I were in A15/16 after crafting a bow, a stone axe (to get a handful of iron from a few rocks in order to craft a better club) and a club. So how is an early gun in A17/18 a bigger problem than the overpowered bows and clubs were in A15/16? In the end in both cases you had/have a powerful weapon on day 1. I feel like you aren't looking at the actual power those weapons provide in the game in the respective alphas, but at the power those weapons would provide in real life. But important for the balance and thus challenge of the game is the actual ingame power in relation to the respective alpha.
The early A18 gun just takes the spot the early A15 bow had, while the early A18 bow is weaker. So while I agree that there is too much ammo in the game right now (especially since I don't even use it, but friends do and they can't use it as fast as I produce, loot and buy it), it actually makes sense to provide the A18 gun with the same amount of ammo the A15 bow had. But since TFP is looking at the numbers and probably will nerf ammo gains (if I understood it correctly) that's just a temporary problem. That can happen in a game that's still in alpha.
So you agree that there is way too much good loot in the early game. Where else would I get the gun then?
I don't understand the question. At the same places you get it now, just later and with a lower chance and a lesser quality.
And the bar I set never seemed low before. Before, it would take roughly two ingame weeks to get a proper gun and a steady flow of ammo going
And back then we had a more vertical design, while the game now aims for multiple tiers among several weapon types. The gun is supposed to be a comparatively weak weapon (t1), balance just isn't done yet.
, with 1 hour days that's 14 hours. A pretty good early game. It was necessary to craft the ammo, that's a major reason, plus you had to find certain recipes.
I was always missing a somewhat clearly defined mid game, maybe I could define that as the phase where I still do not have stuff that I would like to have. These days, that would mostly be the motorcycle. But then again, it's just a convenience piece of no essential relevance.
In this case, the treasure rooms that enable the player to find great gear very early on.
But as Roland already said, they are looking into it.
If you have never played an alpha that has these different cell-hub-types - I'm not sure when these were removed, before the introduction of sleeper I believe - I recommend going back to such an alpha and try that out, you don't know what you're missing (though that might even be a case of "ignorance is bliss", eh). It's certainly in A14 and earlier.
I'm not sure, if I understood that correctly, but if you are talking about outside zombies:
Sleeper zombies were introduced in A16 along with fewer outside zombies. I had more outside zombies in A15 and yes I actually miss them a lot. But I already adressed that in the part you quoted:"At least if we ignore the lack of outside zeds, but as we know that's work in progress."
So I agree that this is a problem the game has right now, but since it's subject to change, we just have to wait. It's not like they aren't coming back ever. Does it hurt A18? Definitely! But judging the overall direction of a game on things that are temporary gone in an alpha, doesn't really make sense.
I look at it from the survivalist perspective: I reach endgame when I'm certain I will survive any situation. And once I have that pistol with enough ammo, I'm certain I will survive any situation. Food is no problem anyway, and with a gun, no enemy is either. Ergo: Endgame.
So a bow and a club were endgame in A15.
If you knew where the next weapon cache is
How would you know that in an unknown house? The only reason you know it in the game is because you were in the house before in another game.
could be certain how zombies behave (and it would be easy to construct IRL reasons why you would know that)
You could never be certain. It's like those people who keep dangerous pets. On some cases never something happens on other cases it does, no matter how certain they were about how their pets behave. In a life or death situation like we have in the game I would never count on all zombies behaving the same way.
And therefor, a design that makes these things as forseeable as they are now, is inferior to one that makes these things not as forseeable.
Then let's hope they will spread the loot all over the POI and get rid of loot rooms.
Which means that if you do not like things to be forseeable - and I like things not to be forseeable - you dislike the current design.
Yes, I don't like loot rooms. I mean I usually clear houses completely, but of course I know where the loot is and thus there is some incentive to just go there. But it's not the loot rooms that take away the challenge, but my knowledge where those loot rooms are and how to get to them without encountering zombies. Even if they would get rid of those loot rooms and distribute the loot over the whole houses there still would be some rooms more interesting than others. In a game where we can destroy everything with ease and nerdpole to any height we want to, they can never keep us from using knowledge we wouldn't have in real life. That's the price we pay for the freedom we have. And that problem already existed in previous alphas.
It's just bad design that the ai is this forseeable and easy to outsmart, it's unjustified to blame the player for not "roleplaying" ignorance of the obvious.
Aside from how difficult (if even possible with the power average computer provide) it is to make an ai outsmart players, it would be bad lore design if zombies would outsmart players. So of course we are supposed to outsmart zombies. But there is a difference between playing the game and playing the system. I mean you do you, I don't care how you play your game. But complaining about a lack of challenge when you are playing the (not even done) system, is something I don't understand.
I don't even get why you are calling it roleplaying to play the game instead of the system. I guess we have a completely different take on what games are and I don't think that any alpha will ever meet your expectations, since alphas usually are in a state where playing the system is at easy as it gets, since preventing it isn't the highest priority.
But I can still explain why I don't like what I don't like about A17+.
Of course you can. I did it too. I was discussing the crafting situation (no Q6 crafting) and how overpowered Lucky Looter is. Roland was stating that loot numbers are being looked at, but that it will take some time. I'm still not convinced that tweaking some numbers will actually solve the problems I have, but there is no point to further discuss it until those tweaks are in and tested.
That said, many of the problems mentioned in this thread are work in progress as well and many others are related to the game being still in alpha. Some actually are just due to is playing the game for thousands of hours already.
nothing to do with nerfing that wont fix anything once again wrong. randomising and removing the lights that give the path will how ever improve the excitement as well as adding new game play that is exciting and again replayable. 
