You get more XP mining than you do killing zombies now really. Same for trees, get a lot of XP for looting, and upgrading high-end blocks while building. Crafting XP is still needing to be tweaked, but isn't "playing the game in general" better for leveling up than "mining for 6 days on and off to get gud at mining so mining will be worth my time" so you can... mine more since your lack of skills previously meant you got little resources VS the time?
Now, go mining for 10-20 mins and gain a few levels. Put some into str skills and some into something else you need. Zounds more enjoyable / exponentially faster than "grind 6 days to get good at mining. Grind 2 weeks to get good at guns. Grind 2 years to get good at healing yourself. Loot constantly for a week to finally be able to loot better. Stand in barbed wire for 4 hours to get good at damage reduction".
In case you missed it, they raised XP for other things than killing zombies (which is still the main selling point of the game too). I can level up a ton faster by hopping in a small mine than I would killing zombie hordes now. You now get rewarded for playing the game, rather than doing mindless-repetitve chores now.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but did you just say the old system had you grinding mining and in the next paragraph you say to grind by mining? If mining becomes your main way of leveling, you now in fact mine more than you did in the old system.
BTW if you're "grinding mining to get good at it" you're doing it wrong, honestly. Any "Grinding" of mining I did in A16 was just to get the materials I need, I rarely went out of my way to get mining level ups just for the sake of getting mining level ups. Any grinding I might have done only happened once I got the Auger - at which point, I guarantee getting mining maxed out in A16 is 10x easier than A17, especially on MASOCHIST *cough* I mean vanilla A17 where you need 10,000+ xp per level up
Additionally, in A17 you now must waste precious points to get mining skillups, and if mining becomes your main source of exp, yes, you'll definitely be grinding mining far more than A16 because now you would use mining to not only get better at mining but also EVERYTHING else lol.
Grind 2 weeks to get good at guns. Grind 2 years to get good at healing yourself. Loot constantly for a week to finally be able to loot better. Stand in barbed wire for 4 hours to get good at damage reduction".
Nobody said A16 system was perfect. It definitely could have been improved. I would have much preferred to see an improvement on the A16 system than have it scrapped and replaced.
And again, if you're grinding, that's on you. No one is forcing anyone to grind.
Grind was not magically removed in A17. You still grind. Just in a different and much more boring way.
It SEEMS like grinding is reduced in A17, merely because it is streamlined, to where you can get all skills just from killing zombies or mining. Streamlined =/= time efficient and also =/= fun. Streamlined in fact reduces the point in doing a lot of different things, and lends itself to doing one or two things (back to zombie killing, or mining).
I can level up a ton faster by hopping in a small mine than I would killing zombie hordes now. You now get rewarded for playing the game, rather than doing mindless-repetitve chores now
And just killing zombies and mining as the only two main ways to exp is not repetitive?
Again I would agree some of the A16 system could have been improved to reduce the feeling that you "Had" to grind to get skills up, and that they should have improved that instead of scrapping it. Even so, you got rewarded for more than just zombies and mining, which had a satisfaction to it. Now you level everything up with a "single" exp bar. I get it, a lot of games do that, but after experiencing LBD in A16, I find this incredibly dull. TFP went above and beyond with the LBD system, it was a very unique system that I have never seen before, very creative, so it was a big shock that they just ditched such a creative and interesting system. I guess the thing is I have been around the video game block for 2 decades now so I'm very picky about my games. I tend to gravitate towards very unique games, not the ones that take a cookie cutter approach, so it saddens me to see cookie cutter features start to crop up.
Perhaps you like the mindless ease of just leveling up your character. I mean, that's a personal taste, and it's clear that this is your preference. At the end of the day that's what it boils down to. It's simple and easy, only have to do one thing. Maybe others like this too, which is why some like the A17 system.
For me, that's not my taste. I LIKE to have to do a lot of things. It keeps things interesting for me. Also there is a huge loss of immersion for me to be able to level things up not related to what I'm immediately doing. It does sound like we'd both agree that one should only need to "play the game" to level everything up. That's why I do say, the LBD system could have used improvement (to avoid the scenario of hugging a cactus for 4 hrs to level up armor for instance lol).
Luckily I recently found a LBD mod to use for A17, which somewhat satisfies me for now. Just glad mods are a thing with this game, so I can still at least somewhat play the way I want.
So I can rocket up and skill everything to 100 fairly easily. It really wasnt bad if you knew the tricks and took advantage of them.