I have a few counters. Not saying you're wrong, just that I disagree.
1) All of us are afflicted by a bug that makes everything too bright at night. We can see quite plainly when it's meant to be dark. Going to options and flipping Reflection Quality from Off to Low (hit Apply) then back to Off (hit Apply) fixes this, but we need to do this each time we log in.
I'm not sure what you mean. Sure, there are a few hours of the night were it is fairly bright, but it gets darker the deeper into the night time goes until it's all but impossible to see without a torch or flashlight. Maybe you all have your gamma turned way up?
2) There's far too few zombies now, specifically out in the world. [Although I have a gut-feeling that increasing GS might remedy this]. Nevertheless, this is the first alpha where I am venturing out at night to do stuff, with little to no fear.
I've found that there's roughly the same amount, they're just spread out a bit more evenly. Also, since they're tougher to fight (that enrage mode can be fatal!) I think it balances out.
3) Put points into Intellect 3 so I could get Grease Monkey and make a Bicycle. Then found out I needed Intellect 4 and Advanced Engineering 2 to build the Workbench I needed to make the Bicycle with. Very annoying.
This one I actually agree with. If the tools *required* to make something is locked behind a skill level, then that something should be unlocked after. I mean, I -guess- it works out in a multiplayer setting, where one person is going down Adv. Eng. and so others can use the workbench they made, but...Yeah, it's annoying.
4) Birds Nests heavily nerfed, especially the eggs. We were a Bacon and Eggs colony, so this is a pain.
I also agree with this one. There are 2 others on my server, one of whom has a perk that increases the food loot rate. We all are complaining about the lack of eggs. For us without the perk, we've found maybe 5 eggs since we started playing. The one with the perk has found only a few more than that.
5) Melee is different. Cant put my finger on it. As a Club-user with 2000+ hours in this game, I am/was quite good at melee combat. Basically if fighting versus walking daytime zombies, I *never* get hit. Never. Not so in A18. They seem to somehow sneak "unfair" hits on me as I melee. Not sure how or why, but it's different and not as fluid as it used to be.
I'll be honest, I've never much liked melee in 7DTD. It always seemed that, despite having a weapon in my hands, I have a shorter reach than zombies not wielding anything. However, the new spear seems to fix that, though I still prefer throwing the spear or shooting my gun over getting into actual melee.
6) Having to spend 20 Stamina to jump up one block is ridiculous. This is one Stamina balance change I think you got badly wrong in A18. Since we can't make ramps until Table Saw is unlocked, people are going to have steps leading into their base, probably with jumps at the top to stop the zeds getting over. Our base had 5 steps then a 2-block jump. 5 steps = 100 Stamina = I need to stand and wait for Stamina like an idiot at the top step before I can make the last jump. Or I forget and fall onto the spikes below.
I think this is affected by the armour you wear. I have mostly light armour, and only use 10 stamina to jump. Also, what ramps are locked behind the table saw? You can place wooden ramps (both 1:1 and 1:2) with just the basic wooden frame.
7) Not enough Bones. So now everything needs a Repair Kit to be repaired. Everything. Kits require Duct Tape which requires Glue which required Bones. Since the need for Repair Kits has exploded through the roof in A18, so has the need for Bones. There are simply not enough of them. This is, without a doubt, the main bottleneck in the game, especially in a multiplayer situation. For the record, a level 2 Pick being used to Mine for an entire day will burn through 12 Repair Kits. We need either more Bones (a LOT more), or a second recipe for Glue.
Phew, we have a LOT of bones. Those corpse piles on the road and in POIs are FILLED with meat and bones - as they should be. I found this out on Day 1. Plus, I've been getting a lot of bones from animals (vultures, rabbits, dogs, etc), more than leather or meat.
8) Some of the roads textures are not being displayed properly (I can see a 'texture failed to load' error in consol. Everythig else looks wonderful in A18, except my roads which looks garbage, low-res placeholder textures. Please fix.
I've personally not encountered this, but I won't say you aren't experiencing it. Have you posted in the bug reporting thread?
9) RWG. Still garbage. Vertical roads all over the place, and not enough water features.
RWG. Still amazing. I haven't seen vertical roads (but then, I haven't travelled much, and I'll tell you why) and the town I'm in is chaulk full of stuff to do. We got a Shotgun Messiah factory, and Shamway Foods factory, a military bunker, 2 oil refineries, lots of apartment buildings, 2 skyscrapers, and I don't know what else. This town is HUGE.
10) Food poisoning mechanic. Get rid of it. It adds nothing. Players only eat at their base. And always have yellow tea. So if I eat something that gives me poisoning, I simply get a yellow tea from the very same chest and cure myself. What did that add to proceedings? Lose this mechanic, it's garbage.
I understand why it's in. The point of it is to make food actually valuable, so players will ration the good food (canned food), get Iron Gut, and/or push hard for the high-end craftable foods like stew where you only eat one every other day or so (depending on settings) so getting sick is a rarity.
11) Farming got screwed. The new Plots are a pain to build and limited in use (can't mix seed types in large co-joined plots). Farming with the Hoe etc was a fun part of the game, and its replacement is poor. If Hoe farming was deemed OP, then there are a ton of other ways it could have been fixed that are far superior to this nonsense.
My group has only just started farming, but so far I don't understand the complaint. Hell, with these new plots, we can actually have a rooftop garden without worrying it'll collapse on top of our heads. And why can't you mix seed types? You could only ever place one seed per block. We haven't had a problem placing, say, aloe next to corn. I'm honestly happy about these changes. You know how much fertilizer we lost before because of entities (players and zombies) hitting the soil? A lot. More than I'd like.
12) Pointless Magazines. So the magazine allowing me to create the Bicycle Chassis dropped. What's the point of reading that without the Handlebar one? Even if both dropped I'd still need to put the point into Grease Monkey to assemble the actual Bicycle. Some mags are great but the ones that let you craft one aspect of a thing that you will still need to spend perks on to fully assemble, are pointless.
Lets start off by differentiating magazines from schematics. Magazines give bonus perks that can drastically improve certain playstyles. Schematics allow you to craft things without spending points. I could be wrong, but I don't think that a single player can buy 100% of the skills. Schematics can make up the difference. Any bike is better than no bike.
13) And now my BIGGEST hate of all....the changes to mining. Surface boulders no longer produce Iron, Nitrate and Coal. I have been playing with the same group since A14, and I have always been the group's miner. I have perfected the art. I know for example that flitting from boulder to boulder was BY FAR the best way to mass mine Iron, Nitrate and Coal for 4 people. I never (or rarely) dug an actual mine as it was so inefficient in comparison to boulder mining. Plus moving across the boulder fields meant I was exploring the map at the same time, which made it practical, and also great fun as you never knew what you'd encounter). Now I am forced to mine downwards when I find a surface node. I hate this change. I hate having to dig mines underneath all the surface nodes. It has seriously killed a lot of the game for me. With a co-op group of 4 to supply with gunpowder, I need to mine 3 full days in every 7. With boulder mining, that was fine and fun as I explained. With underground tunnel mining, do you know how BORING three full days of it is? I want my boulders back.
Surface boulders is how you got your iron and coal? Poor sap. I usually am my groups miner as well, but my big gripe before was that it was such a pain to actually find an ore vein. Those boulders were only if I couldn't find a vein of that resource and needed some right away. It's easy mode now with the surface boulder of a certain type marking what's below. It's especially fun to find another vein of a different ore right next to the one you were digging for (like coal and nitrate next to each other). Just wandering around, within a few hundred meters of each other, I found at least one vein of every mineable resource.
Not to mention that underground mining is safer, and WAY more lucarative that smashing surface boulders. Just build a platform and place a hatch. You get down far enough and no zombie will ever come after you (unless it's horde night, obv.)
) to A17, and you don't like the new surface mining, then I would suggest you give it another go at least.
