Actually you missed all my points, I do know what im talking about but the real question is do you know what you are talking about? lol and probably didn't even read half of what i said anyways...lol I have been praising the changes and the things Joel has been talking about on reddit...You can troll all you want...My earlier posts were totally misunderstood apparently. But I learned quickly any opinions here that differ from from the"mob regulars" get eatin alive as either you being a troll or an idiot that doesn't know anything about modding or codding...lol I really enjoy your worthless opinions...Thanks for the laugh
Nobody is mobbing you but some people maybe could be a bit more respectful. You just very confidently said that certain programming / game development tasks are "not difficult" - "Actually it wouldn't be all that hard at all", and then proceeded to add a whole list of things that are an entire overhaul of the whole game. Not gonna lie, that comment actually made me shiver, lol.
I am a software engineer, not a game developer, I work with payments, credit cards, PoS terminals, transactions/settlements and all that jazz, so you or others can buy video games on credit and game studios can get their money through the many hoops of the financial system. What you wrote down is far from "not difficult", and I can try to respectfully break it down, making (hopefully) proper assumptions about the game and its current state:
1. "get rid of of the biome smoothies" - this is already implemented. Yay!
2. "just change the code to work as learn by doing" - this is a complete overhaul of the whole skills system, learn by doing was gone for many years and the code that was used is nowhere near compatible with the current version. TFP would need to essentially reimplement the whole thing from scratch. And knowing that skills are not an insignificant piece of the overall game, it would take months to even bring back the previous skill system, even more if you want to give an option to the player to follow one system or another. TFP would end up in if-statement hell all over the place.
3. "change the colors to be more gritty and less sunshine like days" - no idea. Might be easy, might be hard.
4. "open up the biomes to go where you want" - already in place as a customizable option, yay!
5. "add in water jars" - this one might not be very hard compared to the LBD as some modders were able to do it by themselves. Still would require some customization, changes to loot tables, recipes, etc.
6. "maybe add in a few older sound effects" - no idea.
7. "Bring back bears to the forest and dear to hunt during the day" - this one is probably easy.
8. "add in the 5 piece clothing and old clothing options" - this one is also very hard for the same reasons as LBD.
And finally, you made a statement "Your looking at 90% just coding changes alone", implying that "coding changes" are easy. They are not, and quite frankly that statement is a bit insulting.
Also bare in mind that there was such a switch (survival vs current or something), it would make every other iteration of the game more difficult to do, as now you are looking at 2 completely different gameplay options to test against and maintain. When Joel mentioned that they want to do a lot of customization options, I also wonder if it won't make their whole game just a huge bunch of if-statements all over the place, which is going to make further development way more difficult due to such branching.
Don't get me wrong - I would absolutely love to be able to customize my gameplay experience to the smallest details, including learn by doing, learn by perks, learn by reading, jars vs no jars, customize each zombie, their health, perks, dungeon/non-dungeon POIs, etc. That would be insanely cool! Unfortunately, it is not feasible, and TFP fellas have to try to make their best judgement in what to change, what to keep and what to make customizable. Resources are limited.