I've had the game for a few years (since A11). Back around A13-A14, a group of friends and myself would play nearly every day for hours- building and repairing our base for each horde night, and then working together to fend off the horde. It was fun, even when it was only me or another person and myself on. The game was challenging, but doable. It wasn't overcomplicated or bogged down by miscellaneous mechanics.
I'm not as happy with the past few Alpha updates. Some of the changes are a lot of fun- enhanced building and crafting options, more building varieties in town, etc. But I think the past few updates since Alpha 16 have all pretty consistently had the same problem: the game isn't balanced well anymore. The player characters are glass cannons at best, and almost every single enemy now feels like a bullet sponge. I think due to complaints from some players, the devs have tried to up the "difficulty" of the game. But I think they've approached it the wrong way.
The exciting part about the game before is that fighting one enemy, or even a small group, wasn't a problem. It was just a fact of life, a small challenge to keep the game exciting. But then, on horde nights or with wandering hordes, ♥♥♥♥ hit the fan. It was possible to fend them off, especially with a couple other players, but you definitely had to be careful and strategic if you wanted to make it through with minimal repairs after. You had to prepare. Nowadays, it seems like it's impossible to just fight off a horde by yourself, or even with another player, especially with multiple irradiated zombies. The only thing that sort of works for defense is a lot of the passive defences, but that takes the fun out of it. it doesn't feel like you're really defending your base, it feels like you're hiding out. And resources are much more plentiful, so it's easier to just repair after the fact than to actually fight.
A lot of this is probably rambling, and i hope that now in A18 (which I haven't had a chance to try yet) some of these issues have been addressed. Or, at the very least, TFP are aware of the problem. I just wanted to speak up and say that maybe the direction where things have been developed are more of a step back than a step forward.
I'm not as happy with the past few Alpha updates. Some of the changes are a lot of fun- enhanced building and crafting options, more building varieties in town, etc. But I think the past few updates since Alpha 16 have all pretty consistently had the same problem: the game isn't balanced well anymore. The player characters are glass cannons at best, and almost every single enemy now feels like a bullet sponge. I think due to complaints from some players, the devs have tried to up the "difficulty" of the game. But I think they've approached it the wrong way.
The exciting part about the game before is that fighting one enemy, or even a small group, wasn't a problem. It was just a fact of life, a small challenge to keep the game exciting. But then, on horde nights or with wandering hordes, ♥♥♥♥ hit the fan. It was possible to fend them off, especially with a couple other players, but you definitely had to be careful and strategic if you wanted to make it through with minimal repairs after. You had to prepare. Nowadays, it seems like it's impossible to just fight off a horde by yourself, or even with another player, especially with multiple irradiated zombies. The only thing that sort of works for defense is a lot of the passive defences, but that takes the fun out of it. it doesn't feel like you're really defending your base, it feels like you're hiding out. And resources are much more plentiful, so it's easier to just repair after the fact than to actually fight.
A lot of this is probably rambling, and i hope that now in A18 (which I haven't had a chance to try yet) some of these issues have been addressed. Or, at the very least, TFP are aware of the problem. I just wanted to speak up and say that maybe the direction where things have been developed are more of a step back than a step forward.