Maybe someone can help me, and I can relay some of my impressions of Alpha 17 at the same time.
Early game feels more dangerous than before, which, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. However, it feels like the reason for the increase in difficulty is because Zombies seem to be able to locate me from ridiculously far away; unless I'm more or less standing perfectly still in a dark room with, hopefully, several blocks between me and the 'outside', zombies seem to be able to locate me. I attempt to keep my noise levels as low as I possibly can, but the problem with this is that, in attempting to clear out a house or something similar to spend the first night in, the act of clearing it out attracts more zombies, and then dealing with those zombies attracts more zombies. It's very difficult to do much of anything when everything I do attracts zombies, and they have an uncanny knack for noticing me through walls and at extreme distances. While I feel it's easier, somewhat, in Alpha 17 to kill individual zombies, the fact that it seems next to impossible for me to kill zombies without attracting more zombies means that I have to spend most of my time killing zombies instead of building up defenses or offensive capabilities to deal with zombies.
To move to something that is more design choice than me sucking at the game itself, the skill system, and the gating of certain recipes behind it, feels like an extreme effort to 'artificially' increase the amount of time you 'have' to spend playing. It is frustrating on a similar level to how Project Zomboid's character creation works; there are various perks and skills that you can purchase, but the amount of them you can purchase without making yourself a lame, half-blind, half-death, hypochondriac, overweight smoker, to balance out the 'perks' with 'flaws', is so small, that it feels ridiculous unrealistic in terms of lack of my ability to buy that someone can't know how to cook, play baseball, have a job like being a doctor, and like to hike all at the same time; I realize that there is a desire to make people specialize, but the severe limitations on what the player can do at the very beginning of the game feels really ridiculous to me. I think that either thinks like basic cooking should not be gated, or that something like a system where you get a certain number of 'freebie' points to purchase one level of a couple of skills, or maybe two at a much increased cost, would be somewhat helpful. Presumably people had jobs and hobbies before the zombie apocalypse, and I imagine the average adult can at least do basic cooking.
I feel like, with the standard zombie trope of "destroy the brain", headshots and wounds to the head should deal more damage, base. Perhaps decrease the initial accuracy of ranged weapons, or make two hit boxes, the 'head' hitbox and the 'brain' hitbox, which the brain being smaller and causing more damage if it, rewarding taking time to aim instead of just "eh, probably gonna hit the head. I think something like a brain hitbox wouldn't overpower ranged weapons too much, as it would be much easier to hit the brain in melee range, so melee attacks, which still carry more risk due to proximity, would still deal more damage, which would reward the risk taken to get in close. Perhaps an increase in damage on a hit to the brain for a power attack, to give increased incentive to making well placed blows instead of just spamming attacks and trying to get lucky. Perhaps blows to specific sides of the head could have additional effects; blows to the back could reduce sight range (optic lobe), and blows to whichever side most of the motor function is on could reduce movement speed, or attack speed, or attack damage, or something similar. Blows to the front of the face might reduce sense of smell, or reduce eyesight, perhaps drastically and permanently, to represent the fact that smashing someone's face in and destroying their eyes, while not fatal to a zombie, still deprives them of a sense.
There's also the whole "killing zombies gives a lot of EXP". I know it's been talked to death, but perhaps some system where avoiding zombies- since fighting them would be your last resort option in a zombie apocalypse- could give experience. For an example, a horde of zombies wandering by the player's location, that pass by the player undetected, could award experience that increases based on the proximity of the player to the zombies; hiding in your bunker while a horde passes by on the edge of their detection range shouldn't really give anything, but being right on the other side of a door while a horde passes by and fails to notice you could grant experience for each zombie that goes by undetected.
