The version is aggravating, tedious, [OUT OF STAMINA], constantly feels like the game [OUT OF STAMINA] is holding you back [OUT OF STAMINA] like some kind of ripoff [OUT OF STAMINA] mobile game [OUT OF STAMINA] about to suggest [OUT OF STAMINA] a cash shop [OUT OF STAMINA] item for your [OUT OF STAMINA] problems.
It's been LONG, LONG known that 7DTD doesn't start until you have a forge. Now you have to not only [OUT OF STAMINA] for 7 damn hours, but do so knowing you can't do anything reasonably productive until that magic level 20.
That's not even touching how tedious it is now to clear POI's, each of them with nearly 5x as many zombies as it has any reasonable right to hold. What's worse, is you can't even pick out "easy" POI's. One minute you're banging on a hobo shack expecting 4-5 zombies to come out, the next you're thirty minutes into The Darkest Dungeon, slogging through four dozen zombies with crap for loot praying some god takes mercy and ends it before 10pm.
Despite everything the game has to offer, it forces you through that slog because it's the only way to progress. you MUST destroy nearly every zombie you see or you don't get anything else except rocks on sticks. 7DTD vets weren't born yesterday, and we all know you can't build or fortify a breakfast with those tools, much less a base.
The learning curve for 7DTD was more fun in A16. Step 1: Learn the importance and versatility of iron tools. Step 2: Put in effort to advance. Step 3: Be creative with your solutions against a clearly superior enemy.
Now it's: Step 1: Slog elbow deep through zombies with a stick. Step 2: Try to catch up for a lost week in a game with zombies that could kick Superman's ass on a Sunday. Step 3: Fail anyway because the devs decided to counter player solutions AND remove early defense capabilities.
I've said it once, i'll say it again. It is BAD DESIGN for a game developer to attack reasonable player solutions to the existing problem of succeeding in their game environment. Continuously doing so only leads to a bad game where the only solution to success is, or is close to, outright exploitation of your game rather than 'playing by your rules' (because the rules say "You're not allowed to win'). This is why we have 9 different varieties of SUPER-zombie. All zombies shred wood. Workers and Fats destroy steel and concrete like a ham sandwich. Ferals sprint. Irradiateds soak.
The odds and numbers are so stacked people gave up trying to find a solution to winning and started finding solutions to avoid it entirely. Hence, Pillared bases and bunkers. Now what? Lets keep the super-zombies as-is, let's remove early game defensive options, AND lets nerf player advancement to the stone age. There's never been a point where someone said "Ok, so how should we expect a player to win." It's always been "How do we stop them from winning?"
The game has been around for over five years. OF COURSE you're going to have every uncle and grandma's sugar baby reading the wikis and videos for the tried and true solutions, and of course you're going to have them on the forums whining about how having the solution to the puzzle makes it too easy.
"OH NO! Players are leveling up by CRAFTING. We better change that so they only get 1 xp from crafting/harvesting, but 700 from fighting zombies with sticks!" Pretty much sums up the time between A16's launch and now
The game needs to slow its roll a bit and figure out whether it's trying to entertain us or trying to 1-up us.