Voted for option 2.
Didn't play the freshest e233 or whatever number it has, however played the other patches + reading all changelogs.
In general, prefered learn by doing leveling system, recipes insteed of having everything handed to us by perk system from previous poll aswell as wellness from eating (even tho that's so convinient to just put perks into fortitude and forget about real life stuff like eating well but... it added some touch, now just shove whatever down throat as long as it have any hunger restoraton stats) and in terms of leveling as is now, no level gates, that also means not taking down gates just to make every perk expensive while still getting 1 point per level, like maxing characters in games so after specializing firstly into something, taking everything else one by one.
Now for the things not mentioned in previous poll.
Zombies block damage and weak spot gps make us not want to build any defenses, especialy not reinforcing random pois which should be rather logical in survival games to start with some ruins insteed of building a castle. Wished for smarter AI and behemoth, by smarter AI meant zombies able to take down supports from towers and digging down to underground bases. Right now, zombies only go for doors (bcs weakest way in) or any opening (making a tower defense kill zone to which zombies willingly go... by avoiding every single trap arround the base), also the AI can be easly cheesed by weird mazes and ramp bases, they also bash blocks so hard, before A17 there were memes that zombies scratch with their fleshy hands reinforced concrete/stainless steel, now?, they hit those blocks like hulks, man, those aliens gave those zombies nice bodybuilding training before setting them free. If they kneel, on top of having radiculous block damage they also get a machine gun attack speed, watched a zombie once hit a block atleast 3 times per second. They stack inside eachother (don't remember that a thing in previous builds), they stack on top of eachother too... (wtf, if they can get inside eachother, how they manage to climb eachother aswell?). Insteed of behemoths we got every zombie doing absurdal damage of keep them away at all cost or this wall will vanish in few seconds, do that on high difficulties where player does much less dmg and zombies have tons of health. And no, whatever those so "pro" players say, the zombies are not challenging or fine, they are unaturaly strong and fast, like if tfp put in a bunch of chargers and tanks from l4d. Right now only seeing self building bridges to knock them off and building towers with maxed steel doors and reinforced concrete all arround... in 2-3 layers, bcs that much damage they can chew even when bombarding them all night with lvl 60+ character with tier 4 shotgun and all the possible for headshotting, shotgun messiah and perception perks (if not for those shotgun stuns and knocking them from the bridge...), not going to run arround base and fighting them in open or making ramp bases or even kill zones bcs that's too simple, zombies can be easly outsmarted or outrun/escaped from, want to resist the horde, a real non-gps non-hulksmash horde. (Also to add, yes, know that they changed time when irradiated, cops etc come so earlier hordes are much easier insteed of getting irradiated stuff right in first horde like in first experimental but their damage to blocks is still radiculous)
The guns were fine in A15, the part assembling was annoying but it kind of naturaly gated getting the mid-top tier guns as gettig lucky was not enough, had to get lucky multiple times so there was no day 1 rambo. In A15 assembled first gun after like 50+ days just bcs didn't want to make a bad tier gun and fix/reasemble it again so normaly it would be like getting some basic gun after 2-3 weeks maybe with 25% loot and no respawns or baby packages from air. Then in A16 trader prices were lowered and they were literaly everywhere, could have like 5+ traders all arround in 1 km square area or something but still had to work for the dukes, get the first paycheck from wheels and other stuff, buy hop seeds and at the end cook some beer and sell it for profit. Now getting multiple guns per day.... on 25% loot, second day got tier 4 iron axe and bf got a sledge hammer, we had so many guns that we only could to scrap or sell them.... oh wait... in this world guns are worthless bcs logic and bcs they are in every soggy garbage bag. The weapon progression is pretty much over during first week, mods?, meh, they add customization and coolness..., but getting a shotgun right at the first day with like 20-30 shells? com'on, and we can also craft them like if we didn't have enough of them, how do we craft them, were we trained in some gun making factory... that specialized in making every weapon?, the recipes were more logical and also gated the late game from being right at day 1.
Exploration was killed, the new dungeon pois make zero sense and after a while we memorize their patern and hidden locations... but still, looting is cool... except there is no point. Guns were moved into day one + are craftable later so just smash some zombies. Recipes were a huge thing to find, seeing crack-a-book was somethign special, seeing any bookshelf meant there gonna be that desired recipe, oh, please be the crossbow! (except now the crossbow is garbage, yes, is..., well, more realistic bcs it takes forever to reload it and being slow as snail... but it killed any fun and reason to use it, just use composite bow insteed).
Exp is propably that gonna be polished in the end, but the fact that we are basicaly required to kill zombies to gain levels just turned it into first person shooter (yes, cutting trees, stones and whatever also gives exp but cutting 100 trees doesn't equal in resources and time spent to killing 10 zombies).
Spikes were dumbed, they deal abnormal damage but have only 3 stages and are gone, then there are slightly more resilient forged iron spikes, yay..., and that's all about spikes, they are anyway mostly worthless outside o putting them in key areas (like under the bridge for zombies to fall on) as zombies will literaly naigate thro traps to not get hit if possible, there can be a field of hunderets of spikes but they will just sacrifice few of their friends to make a straight, 1 block wide line thro them to their target.
Sewed-off shotgun was removed to make a mod, same about spiked club. Good job on removing content and making progression even thiner than it was.
Trader is so cheap now and getting money is so easy.
As for RWG complains, dunno, having sporadical flying pois or rock cubes sticking out of the ground was fine, having water splits by roads and some weird water holes and other water behaviors... cool...(even lived in one rock cube however horde zombies kept spawning inside the base even with land claim and 2 beds protecting it). The only thing that bothered us was that maps were split into huge main biomes, like navezgane so if landed in forest... prepare to live in forest. Also the burnt areas, they are everywhere.
Illness, never had one, bf had 2 times... somehow, propably getting hit too many times lol, but personaly, no infections, some "feeling something...." or whatever, but it never ended up in infection or other sickness. In previous builds would avoid getting hit at all cost, even avoid combat if not needed (now every zombie is a walking exp bag) and if would get infected anyway, would go and search all those tree stumps for honey, raid houses and search for pop & pills. Now the tree stumps were removed (why?!) and were replaced by harvestable block that have a high chance of getting honey... which never is needed and there are also rarely antibiotics and herbal ones... which also are not needed. Hope that no infection thing is a bug... or perhaps thats supposed to be rare and getting punished only if getting continuosuly hit, dunno...
Ah, also forgot to mention zombies barely ever drop those bags and if they drop them, there's propably nothing interesting inside. Not to mention that looting after horde nights and gettings tons of those bones is over, the bags vanish in like 1 or 2 game hours?, gore blocks expried extremely slowly so there was always time to loot them later, they also proides bones for glue, not that glue is hard to get now, butchering those vultures and ocasional animals is enough but... yeah.
Spent almost 2 hours writing this wall...
