As much time you spend on these forums trying to convince others how bad 17 is you could have mod it to what you like. TFP can't please everyone let alone every aspect of gameplay. Every version I have had things I don't like and I turned to modding to make it more like what I want to play. The latest version with modlets gives us the most control we have ever had. If you're looking for a vanilla game that pleases you with every aspect it's not going to happen.
As much time as you spend on these forums reading and defending TFPs you could have played it and reviewed it for yourself, boosting the statistik.
I can not mod. I never even played modded 7d2d before A17 hit. I always loved the game for what it was.
There were some gripes that I had with the way the devs were set on certain issues (again breaking world design/immersion for forced difficulty is bad for a sandbox where you want to spend 100s of hours), but overall it was enjoyable.
A17 is not. Even once they finetune perkcost and levelgates, traderprices, ressourceharvesting and stamina... the CORE is still one that has no (near) endless gun progression( once you have the mods/can craft them its over), perks are still way less immersive and do not give a gradual progression and can not be balanced so every perk is the same amount of useful in some way.
If they REALLY want to fix this problem, they need to let go of their fallouty vision. This game isn't fallout. It was always more a minecrafty skyrim with guns. But they act like EVERY rpg needs perks and levels and stuff.
They need to undo most of the locking of content. WE CAN SEE THAT THERE IS NOT MORE ENDGAME. Don't try to hide it behidn an extended earlygame grind.
Remove levels, give us back a more seemless progression that is less bound by levels (quality ranges 1-600 maybe add legendary stuff that can only be found) they say they will die on the "no learning by doing" hill, but this is one of the biggest disadvantages, as it focuses everything down to leveling.
I don't want to convince OTHERS of this. I want to SHOW the DEVS, that while there certainly ARE some players who enjoy the new alpha and like certain unpopular changes, but the majority does NOT like those changes.
Yes they play it... not everyone hates it THAT much that they'd rather switch back to A16 (30% of forum players is not representative and I know that) but that doesn't mean they LIKE playing it. Often times we try to power through boring grinds/ games because we hope that there is something just out of reach. Just look at Atlas.
People play it... en masse. With friends on stream or even alone with randoms... because they have hope that there will be more enjoyment lateron.
This alpha is a mess. And yes balancing can fix quite a bit of stuff... but the CORE problem is, that TFPs want this game to be more grindy and less sandboxy. Not "do whatever you want as long as you can survive" and more a "do this for 3 hours so you can do that 3 hours so that you can repeat it until you have a small base".
It is tedious, it is bad gamedesign and worst of all:
they do not care what players think is best. Yes they listen to balancing feedback... but if THEY want something a certain way *cough*forge*cough*levelgates*cough* they will brute force it down players throats... and they have noticed.
THIS is at the core of this alphas issues. I can overlook balancing fixes... I can easily edit the xml to my liking until its fixed.
But I can't edit TFPs.