Now youre looking at a stripped down system. A less complicated system and a system that promotes LESS activity, even if it is opening a map and moving 30 feet.
Hard to say with the information we have. There's been some changes that feel like simplification but honestly, good gameplay should be clever, not menial, pointless, brainless mouse-clicking tasks. The replanting is an absolute non-issue, because harvesting and then retiling and then replanting doesn't bring anything to the game. You can argue that it makes you use some of your precious time, and I would reply sure, and I would not want the game to be easier now that said time is no longer wasted, but I'd prefer the difficulty come from somewhere else more interesting, not a clicking minigame.
Same thing applies to clay. For one, the clay patches look ugly as all hell, in my opinion. For two, as was mentioned, there was nothing interesting or complicated or challenging about finding and gathering clay.
This reminds me of Escape from Tarkov, an "ultra-realistic" shooter that is so obsessed with it that to load a magazine in the inventory you need to move every single bullet into the magazine with your mouse, then move the magazine into your gun. Pointless. That's not realism or an interesting mechanic.
As for gun parts, I wouldn't say it's simplified; it's just different. Attachments bring a wealth of new features that gun parts could not do. It's a new system of its own, not one less system.
Zombie loot is not gone and is unfair to add to the mix of "simplified systems". It's simply a reduction in drop rate, really, which in turn grants better performance.
So now most ground will also have simple looks to them? Where is the variety? Why strip away the games identity to become a plain jane survival clone?
I doubt it. There is no reason to believe that they removed the different appearances of soils in different biomes. They just all give clay soil, from what it sounds like.
You're seriously overreacting. A17 is much harder than what we have now, from what Roland has been telling us, and it is so while cutting down some of the more brainless tasks that the game had, while adding more interesting ones or making existing ones better (like food and water). To me, that sounds perfect. And no doubt there will be many modders who will add more micro tasks to the game again, this time with even more liberty thanks to all the improved framework.
