Funchy

Regarding Perkz and Gating: I think Professions should determine what Recipes you have at your disposal, although i have different professions in mind. e.g. soldier who can handle weapons, isnt really gonna be able to make weapons, but a mechanic is. meaning: Professions need each other (mechanic + soldier e.g.) and Professions are divided into "usage" and "crafting". (doctor + bio-engineer, mechanic + soldier, builder + architect, etc.) for s.p./self-sufficient reasons you can choose 2 Professions at start, and some kind of extra trait/hobby/personality type of perk. While i think fighting zombies should make you better at fighting zombies, for game mechanic simplicity reasons, i would also argue, that you become more "experienced" and thus should be able to learn new Professions with more experience. And then a questline will reward you with the professions recipes / skillz. Meaning you COULD become a mechanic, becuz you have fought a lot of zombies to reach the lvl/xp, but you would also need some mechanic-questline to fullfill. also: zombie xp down(maybe by x0.5), first time crafting xp up(slightly, maybe x1.15). Hopefully resulting in less aggressive Playerstyle to be forced onto players. Im not sure about general stats like Stamina/Health/Run speed/Regen/etc. , but also not really against just skilling them on lvl ups. Regarding Guns: I think that 3 Parts for lower Tier guns(Pistol, Crossbow, smg), 4 Parts for higher Tier guns(sniper,ak47,shotgun) would be fine. Base DMG on rounds is good imo, but then you need at least 3+ Ammo Types and tie them to higher tier ressources or to more ressources, with increasing DMG. Ideally Mods add meaning(visually and gameplay wise, but thats a ♥♥♥♥load of work xD). So at first approach, the system you have described for perkz should work in that regard here, too. The rest is already in: Mag size, scopes, silencers, etc. well, that are my 2 cents