Kinda feel the same. I can't play A17 without heavy modding. Like Games4Kickz recently said "Alpha 17 came along and I stopped having fun playing it".
Same for me, a17 took away alot of the looting aspects and reasons to go looting with how the crafting system etc worked, A18 is fixing this problem in a big way, with items having random stats within a limit based on tier, where the tier below can have slightly better stats than the tier above if you get lucky to find a perfect one. Crafted items always are about in the middle of what its stat range is, its static. Everything has random stats even clothing that adds temp protection vs heat/cold. Then you have the book series. Crafted stuff is no longer the best, as player can only craft up to tier 5, if you want tier 6 you have to loot it. Even if you could craft tier 6, it starts at the middle so, you can potentally find a looted item thats better. I also heard you can get most perks for free from books you can loot, but I also suspect you need to have the base stat to enable that level of perk at the minimum, and you most likely cannot get stats for free.
To me a17 lost a lot of the reason to bother exploring and looting. a16 I could play till day 50 or 60 or 70, a17? I am usually bored by day 7, by then I am established and is virtually no reason to even bother playing anymore.
I will admit I am not a big fan of seperating weapons into diff stats, as I used to always run with a bow, shotgun, something for range usually ak47, and a melee weapon usually a sledge. Now insted of needing 2 stats to do this I am going to need 3 or 4, not to mention each weapon type is its own skill so there is even more wasted skill points, unless the thing about perks is true. Due to this system looting is going to be even more important, as in vanilla even without perks a high tier modded weapon will always preform pretty well.
I view 7dtd more as a looter survival thats very light on the survival elements, I usually have food and water issues fixed before day 1 or 2 at the most is over. I have no idea how anyone has managed to starve or dehydrate to death in this game with how easy it is to get food and water. About all I can say is the player just has to suck at the game to be blunt to manage to die of starvation/dehydration. Even playing on 25% loot there is more than enough. Water is especially easy to deal with, snow biome or find a lake. Used to be able to find a desert and have no water issues, but you now need boiled water to make yucca juice insted of just needing yucca by itself.
I play the darkness falls mod myself, adds so much to the game and makes horde night actually a threat.. actually the whole game is much harder. As you have ferals on day 1. The first Day 7 horde in DF is much harder than a day 100+ horde in vanilla, as the zombies come non-stop and you usually have tons of ferals and such in the first horde. It also has new enemies like bombers that specilize in destroying base, behemoths that just wreck things, and even demonic zombies that can throw fireballs that light you on fire. Later on gamestages your horde night will eventually be all or mostly demonic zombies. They also have 1000-1500 hp for most of them. As a bonus the enemy AI has been tweaked, so its much harder to exploit the AI into doing things, its made me rethink base design. Maze's work partially vs the smart zombies, but the dumb ones will just pound on any wall to get to you. Or smash your supports if your trying the old kill corridor as they just smash the nearest block to them they see if they cannot get to you in a straight line, if any of them happen to be dumb ones that go by your supports.
Major issue with the games development to me is the fact the devs can't seem to settle on how they want it to be, every alpha from 10 when I started each alpha has pretty much redesigned the game, most dev studios have a pre-planned roadmap they stick to, and have the base systems locked down in alpha. TFP does not seem to have one of these, as each alpha the skill system etc gets nearly completly redone. I am wishing a18 will finally be what they stick with so that the game can finally get more content added, as we need a tier above steel with how easy steel tools is to get. Redoing how the game is played every version has been holding the game back for years now. Don't get me wrong I love this game, but I feel it should have gotten much farther than it is by now after 6+ years.