I have to completely disagree here. I have played with newer players that love the game and of course it should be punishing initially, it's a survival game after all lol. Think about it...you are naked and stranded with no recollection of what happened and there are things every where trying to kill you. You have to adapt and improvise quickly in order to survive. Nevertheless, you can increase or decrease the difficulty in order to match your current skill. The game is fully customizable in regards to difficulty and if the newer player finds it too hard, they should lower it. Not to sound like an Ass about all of this but games should be hard and should offer a challenge, otherwise it gets old and boring fast.
I think what most people mean by "difficulty" is not the zombies... seriously, I have them always on run (where they are faster than you but not when you sprint) and on insane and they are still just xp pinhatas.
I think difficulty means, getting started, making yourself comfortable in the game.
Gathering ressources without beeing out of breath every 2 seconds, getting starting gear while keeping in mind food, water, temperature,foodpoisoning,diarrea when clearing out zombies from a poi, seeing attackpatterns and how to fight wolves and vultures.
None of this is goverened by difficulty settings.
In A16 you instantly got a feel for the game. Yes it was still a load, but at least you could run anywhere without beeing out of breath every 2 seconds. And while you were doing that in the game, you already got better at attributes. In A17 you also need to know what you want to put points into, because you will get fewer and fewer points and reskilling isn't possible, so if you have put everything into agility, you don't have any inventory, nothing to fight, no forge no nothing.
At least this is what I am fairly certain most ppl mean by "A17 is more difficult".
Because it is definalty easier to play (against zombies) as molotovs now give xp and zombies have even worse range.