My friends and I have enjoyed this game for more than a few years, and always find ourselves coming back for another playthrough when a new patch or two has dropped. It was always fun to see what had changed, and progress left me excited for the game’s future.
Well... Alpha 17 is the first time I’ve ever returned to this game and had significantly less fun, wishing things would go back to the way they were. Here are some of the changes, big or small, that I personally really wish hadn’t happened.
1. Zombies cannot be looted anymore. A slim chance to drop a loot bag filled with random contents just doesn’t compare to the dynamic system that existed in prior patches. Need meds? Try hunting some nurses. Hungry? A fat guy might be carrying a can of soup or two. In this iteration, zombies are reduced to nothing more than walking XP. Less dynamic, less fun.
2. Hunger and thirst were removed from the in-game HUD. This information is still available, but only when viewing your character summary through your inventory. I genuinely don’t understand the thought process behind hiding such an essential metric for an omnipresent mechanic in menus when it was perfectly fine sitting above the health bar.
3. The leveling system completely ditched specialized experience in favor of general experience. This reduces progression to a straight up mindless grind. Before, you had to use weapons and tools to become proficient with them, practice skills to perform them more efficiently, and organically perk out your character based on the way YOU played the game. Now? Eh, you can just do whatever. Chop a tree, smack a rock, drop a couple skill points, and boom, you’re magically better at shooting a bow and arrow. Less dynamic, less fun.
4. The death of literature and schematics. Earlier versions of the game featured certain rare books and magazines that were essential to progressing. If you wanted to learn how to craft something, you’d need to read a schematic to learn it. This incentivized exploration and looting in a big way since only rudimentary tools were available to your primitive caveman arse until you went out and edumucated yourself. Now, once again, progression has been reduced to a mindless grind thanks to the new perk system. Chop a few trees, bash a few skulls, do literally anything and guess what - now you can make forged iron! Bash a few more skulls - now you can make tools from steel! Less looting, more grinding, less fun.
Also, it makes absolutely no sense that a schematic should be a consumable crafting item. After crafting one piece of armor, suddenly both the direction sheet and the knowledge of how to craft such an item poof into the void. Not only is this downright silly and unrealistic, it’s tedious.
5. Item quality and gun parts have been super-simplified. Previous game versions featured qualities ranging from 1 all the way to 600. This has since been condensed to 1-6. Combine this with the removal of gun assembly, and looting has once again been heavily deemphasized. Now, rather than slowly acquiring better and better gun parts and upgrading your hard earned weapon as you go, you will most likely be drowning in fully assembled weapons from day 1. Before the first blood moon, my friends and I had already gathered 3 max quality firearms.
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Basically... this game isn’t fun anymore because levels are literally all that matter, and gaining levels is a total grind. I used to love this game, and this latest playthrough has made me genuinely sad and left me astonished at many of the changes.
Thoughts?