Hello @Subquake, I registered to the forums and thought I'd post here as myself and another mate have just played through your mod and thought you might like to hear our experience. Over all it was for the most part a positive experience and have to say we really appreciate the time and effort you've put into the mod. I'll try keep this as progressive as possible so I'll start from the start.
Jumping into the game I have to say that we're intermediate to advance in 7d2d and have played through some of the other popular mod packs such as Darkness Falls and War3zuk. I also have to put in a disclaimer that we play through to the end game of these mods and don't really grind out past the last acquiring the last tier of items or bosses in these types of games/mods (typically 30-50 hours per run through). We also only play with ourselves so anything multiplayer related I will not base the opinion on. The starting difficulty was probably close to perfect for us as we had a decent idea on what we were doing and how to fight zombies with basic melee tools so that was a plus, overall it also felt quite linear with the difficulty scale being fairly weak to begin and strong later on, so I give kudos for that. The UI was absolutely fantastic, probably one of the highlights of the mod and albeit a tiny few things could use tweaking it was excellent. We played with the option of not being able to see schematics or recipes that we had not learned yet which was the first time we did it this way. I'm a bit on the fence about it because I think it would have been excellent but with the use of having to learn almost everything in the game and a handful of workbenches which lead to more workbenches made it fairly difficult to know what the progression was and we found ourselves building multiple workbenches but still not being able to craft anything useful or for progression. We also made a big rookie mistake and didn't realise until mid-late game that you could craft bar moulds in the campfire, I think this was a bit on us and a bit on the fact we didn't have much reason to believe that this sort of item would be crafted in the campfire of all places. It was also due to the fact that every other workbench or crafting tool opens on the 'view all items' tab so with the assumption that was the same for campfire we had no idea we had to select the other tab to see it. I think being able to see everything you can craft as soon as you open the campfire including drinks and the moulds would have sold the problem we had. So again I think it was a little on us and a little on the discrepancy between crafting stations that caused that confusion.
I think the next part to go through would be the combination of loot and the schematics system. We really liked the idea of the schematics system however believe that from our playthrough there was some flaws in it. The quick way to say it would be by the time we had all the last tier crafting benches and essentially had the ability to learn and craft everything in the game (probably around 30-40 hours at this point) we had only crafted, I would say, around 5 items that weren't just necessary pieces to upgrade a bench etc. After the initial stone weapons and tools at the start of the game we didn't craft a single weapon or tool until the Auger later in the game. We love the idea of exploring and adventuring but the fact that we could barely craft any of our own items kind of sucked (keep in mind I understand the upgraded quality etc would be for people playing this long term so to speak or multiplayer) I'm 100% sure we must have been doing something wrong with the research data as realistically the only way we got it was from scrapping books, flashlights and circuit boards as well as buy from the trader. Again this lead to us barely being able to learn and schematics to play around with and we had to save pretty much everything to get the next upgraded bench/station. I think it also relates to the fact that we could never craft anything better than what we had found or received as quest rewards/bought. Last point to the schematics part was that the rng made it almost as if it was a lucky dip as to if we would get something useful or not, I know that sounds silly because that's what rng is but if the progression system is built around schematics then to very rarely get anything useful was a bit disappointing and frustrating. To wrap up this part I'll conclude with the idea is great, if we played through it again or another similar mod I think we'd show all recipes and crafts because it was a bit too frustrating with the rng of schematics on top of that. We think that reduced cost of research data would be great or at least a game option to reduce it so we could explore more of the crafting since we did so little in our playthrough.
Now onto the building. Absolutely loved the idea but felt it was a bit too slow. The idea that we couldn't just build a base strait up and we had to find a house for shelter was fantastic, it was probably one of the best experiences of the mod. We placed ourselves right next to the trader in a 2 story house where we smashed out the walls and made it open plan living. The kitchen was our storage area and boy was it infuriatingly small but expanding it with random household storage items we looted such as ovens and mouldy old bags was great fun. However in saying that the downside is by the time we had finished our playthrough we still hadn't even built our own base or a horde base since it took so long to be able to get resources for blocks without spending many hours using bad tools such as iron axe on trees or shovels for cobble or cement. Again we found ourselves buying most of what we needed because it was so extremely inefficient to grind out resources. Maybe that was the idea/feel for the mod you had intended, we just prefer to be able to do a little bit more base building as that's one of the things we enjoy most about survival crafting games. Overall for the building aspect it was a positive on our end just a little slow for our liking.
I'll quickly dabble on the vehicles because I don't have a tonne to say but overall they were good. I've played enough now to always want a vehicle since walking is so slow but we got a vehicle about the time I would expect. Only issue is the way we got it. The idea of repairable vehicles around the map was really cool, however it took us about 2-3 in game days early on to quest and save enough to simply buy the motorcycle. The idea that it was so simple to buy it but quite difficult to build or repair one was a bit of a let down because we would have loved to be able to explore the crafting but again I digress. Storage was cool, oh and something I almost forgot is that we don't have really anything bad to say about the weight system, we loved it more than the standard slot limit so that was definitely a positive. I do have to say though gasoline was a bit of a pain, it felt like there wasn't enough, mainly in places like the oil factories we would only get about 2 cans worth and whilst running 2 motorcycles, Augers, Chainsaws and drills it ran dry real quick. The oilrig was too late for us and we didn't end up getting it as we were finishing up the playthrough by that point so maybe that would have been our solution. Collecting liquids such as water, beer, mineral water was a cool idea only thing we were confused about was the fact we couldn't fill anything up from lakes or pools so that was a bit befuddling.
Not going to go too much into the perks and skills as I think there is too much variance so my build would be a significantly different experience to another but overall it felt relatively balanced and nothing game breaking. The farming was pretty simple and similar to normal so not too much to say there apart from living off the land perk is absolutely needed otherwise not worth it because of how many plants it takes for 1 seed. And lastly there was one major thing missing from our point of view, bosses. I've seen in the roadmap that you do plan to include bosses so we'll most likely replay this in the future and look forward to seeing what we will battle with.
Thanks for having a read of our experience and hopefully it helps you with developing your mod. Overall we did have fun and although there were some things we personally would change there was a lot we were impressed by. We understand that it's your mod and the idea of what you want the final product to look like is completely up to you so we look forward to seeing what you come up with. Until next time take care and again a big thank you for the work you've put in, it shows!
