I'm fairly new to the game, so obviously take my opinion with a grain of salt. I LOVE the game so far, however whenever I play any game, I enjoy there being a very challenging endgame at the end to test my ability to adapt to it.
One worry I've had with this game (which has been confirmed in watching some videos of people crafting bases that allow them to afk cheese the hardest difficulties) is that playing on the highest difficulty for a prolonged period of time will leave the game becoming FAR easier over time rather than more challenging.
While I understand not everyone is a masochist who enjoys having a game kick their ass, that's what lower difficulties are generally for in video games. There isn't really any replayability in games, for people like me (and there's a lot of us), that don't force you to become more adaptable and skilled at a game for those who like to test their own abilities and "win" a game. I would expect the highest difficulty to really force you to adapt to the game mechanics AND have to depend on a high degree of skill to survive (in this case, on horde nights).
For example, one thing I would expect the game developers to do would to be to nerf the knockback of sledge turrets on some more threatening zombies on the highest difficulty (I've seen sledge turret cheeses that allow people to afk horde nights on days in the thousands). Key words, HIGHEST DIFFICULTIES. If you still want the sledge turret cheese to be in the game, then you can play lower difficulties if you want a more relaxed gameplay experience.
While I understand I can always choose to make the game more difficult for myself (by not allowing myself to use things that can cheese the game), there is a certain satisfaction in thinking through all the game mechanics and skillfully maneuvering my way to making it to points most people haven't. I would expect horde nights on the highest difficulty (no matter how far I've progressed) to be extremely stressful/action packed for the average player, where they would need to abandon original bases and have to skillfully communicate and fight their way to backup bases. As such, I would expect on the highest difficulty for it to be very difficult for most people to survive horde nights on the highest difficulty 100+ days in, no matter what they can build (obviously there would be metas to what structures will allow you to be more likely to survive), but the point is it would still be a challenge for even the most skilled players.
That's something I would absolutely love to see and vastly extend the life of the game for me. And while there are always PVP servers I could join to increase the challenge, I have friends who aren't absolutely insane at every game they play, but I can still manage to help them enough that we can take on some of the craziest challenges any game throws at us. I play games for those moments of celebration when we've conquered some crazy challenge thrown at us after dying dozens of times before finally figuring out some sort of strategy and dealing with problems we weren't expecting to run into and successfully conquering them (or even almost conquering them, then rethinking how we can do better in the future). One of the reasons some in the military have trouble reintegrating into civilian life and wind up continually returning to the military is because that feeling of overcoming some insane challenge with others is extremely addicting (Obviously I'm not saying that is the primary reason veterans have trouble reintegrating into civilian life generally, that is clearly not what I'm referring to).
I'm REALLY hoping the final game provides such a difficulty or at least makes certain cheeses obsolete for those specific difficulties. With a game as complex as this, I'd understand if they weren't able to. However, if they could provide such a challenge in the future, this game would easily become one of the best games I've played (if not the best). I'm having a blast playing it now, just hoping I continue to have a blast playing it as my buddies and I increase the difficulty and continue to play.
