Dodge

I do quests in town A up to tier 2 or 3 i'm now fairly leveled and decide to go to town B, i meet the trader of this town and asks him for quests, he only gives me tier 1 quests, but i'm overleveled for those which makes them quite boring but i HAVE to grind them to get to tier 2, i now go to town C and same thing happens, grinding quests... Having the tier quests reward after finishing a certain ammount of quests of one tier is nice and should definitly not be removed but going in a new town and having to restart quests from tier 1 is uninteresting since at this point you are overleveled for those. How about you have a counter for each tier and finishing let's say 5 or so quests of that tier gives you the tier reward and you can repeat it indefinitly, a way for the trader to reward you for doing a certain number of quest of a specific tier, but at the same time when you unlock a new tier it's unlocked for every trader, so you dont have to grind them from the bottom over again. But you can choose to do them if you want to. This way the tier rewards are still available and at the same time the unnecessary grinding of lower tier quests is removed.

Zombies shouldn't be smart but at the same time being able to easily cheese them and make them loop around without them realizing that they cant even hit you feels off as a whole. One solution is to make zombies smarter and if they are unable to hit you would start destroying the base, but this also feels off, zombies arent supposed to be smart at least not the basic ones. Another solution is to add more types of zombies that each have their own fighting style and attack you differently. So for example you would have a zombie specialised in destroying structures, low hp, only hits structures unless maybe it can directly hit you, has more block damage and lower damage on entities. Ranged zombies, never hit you with melee, only attacks at a distance, can hit trough bars, holes etc. Flying zombie that can land on rooftop and then start attacking entity/structure on foot, destroying the ceiling and landing on your head. Etc... Basically the idea is that add a variety of types of zombies to make the gameplay more rich instead of one dimensionnal and require you to be fully aware of your surrounding and being able to fend off attacks coming on every front instead of being able to mindlessly click at zombies coming directly at you.

Ah yes of course if i dont enjoy it and others do it must be because they are all sheeps and i'm superior to them for not enjoying it. "most streamers are not sincere, play badly and do it only for the sake of profit" You have some really negative views or maybe you're seeing things in extremes, yes sometimes there's a popular game and a streamer will play it for financial reasons but most of the time if they didn't enjoy it they wouldn't play it or at least not replay it. Also "play badly", there's plenty of streamers focused on "elite/competitive gameplay" if that's what you're into but most of the time nobody gives a @%$# if "oh no they are not playing in the most optimal way possible i'm so triggered". Put some water in your wine, not everything is so black and white, but by the looks of it you seem to be drinking straight acid mixed with salt.

If anyone is unironically crying/@%$#in because they have to wait 2-3 more days to play they seriously need to go outside and touch some grass.

If the only issue is being able to bypass the POI to go directly to the loot, there's plenty of ways to avoid that: loot in random locations inside the POI, loot that needs a key or some access code that you find in the POI itself which again the key or code could be in a random location so you HAVE to explore all the POI, cant think about anything else on the top of my head but theres plenty of other solutions. I agree that having end gear right at the beginning kills the fun, that's why it shouldnt be possible but not because of artificial lvl loot gating but because the place where you find that loot is too dangerous and you wouldnt be able to get there. So realistically you couldnt get end game gear at lvl 1 but the loot would be there and you could imagine an extremly skilled player still trying his luck and it would be a great experience and maybe with some gear and investing in the right attributes, someone insane at the game could clear that POI and get the loot, but that's only one POI that he would have cleared, let's say he gets an assault rifle, what's good is it going to be if he doesnt have bullets to go with it, and for bullets you need the recipe, the forge, the mining tools, the chemistry station etc. So you would still have to visit and clear all these other POI's to really have interesting loot and being able to make higher level stuff. The way i see it, it's challenge Vs grind. With the current system you grind levels and then magically get good loot in some random box in an easy to clear POI, instead of taking on a challenging POI and if you are able to make it you get rewarded for it. "balancing it and making it work in the context of this game would amount to more years of development for a questionable gain" True, maybe there could be a mix of gamestage and POI based loot. Some POI's would have a fixed minimum difficulty and would give a guaranteed loot, like the recipe for the auger in some huge mine filled with high level zombies, keys to find and loot in random location, dungeon type stuff. Demon zombies and lava?

Loot progression is very uninteresting, basically boils down to grinding levels = better loot. The same crates in different POI's will give the same loot just because "your level is not high enough" So there's no point in clearing a really dangerous POI filled with zombies when another much easier POI will have the same crates and same loot. The new A20 will change that a little with multiplier but not really. It would be really nice if the loot was tied to POI's and not level, you find a highly secured military base, filled with highest level zombies, special infecteds, maze like underground structure with access key cards to collect, you know the loot will be amazing because it's an advanced military base, you could try to clear it even at lvl 1 but it would be impossible, so the loot is organically gated by how hard the POI is and not determined artificially by your level. Current system works and is ok just kinda boring.

Right now the progression is very linear: Level up to get better loot --> level up more --> etc It locks the player in a very predictable way to play and progression pattern, you HAVE to level up/grind to get better loot and progress, no other way around it. You could spend 2 hours completely clearing out a large POI, killing 50+ zombies, almost dying 3 times and when you finally get to the loot and open it you get the same crappy level 1 gun/gear that you would get at another POI that would take you 5 minutes to clear. From what i red biomes are going to get a gamestage multiplier (snow, desert and wasteland/burned forest) harder and better loot, that's really good and gives you a choice, you could either risk it and go for the harder place and try to get better loot or stay in the easy place and progress at your own rythm. Why stop at biomes? Instead of having the gamestage based on linear leveling and time spent it could be based on POI's, a harder POI would be more dangerous and challenging to clear but would give better loot, then you have a reason to go in dangerous places and a proportionnal reward for the challenge. Sure it's convenient to have the gamestage being tied to level and days spent because it's easy to implement but the game difficulty and progression feels artificially locked it lacks spice and challenge, POI's have more or less all the same difficulty and even those that are harder to clear are not worth it. With gamestage tied to POI instead, you could have the hardest place like a military base in the hardest biome the wasteland and you could have the possibility to try and clear it at level 10 or even on a fresh start with nothing more than a wooden club but you would be faced with zombies after zombies, all of them at max level, special infected running after you and spitting acid, bosses, traps etc. So it would be possible to get that high tier loot at any time but realistically you would not be able to get it unless your gear and level is high enough but depending on your skill you could try to clear a POI that is hard but still doable and get better stuff. A natural way to have gamestage and progression with the possibility to have a harder challenge at any time for better loot and a reason to have a lot of different POI's with their own level of difficulty and unique rewards. Quests could be tied to it too, a level 1 quest would bring you to a level 1 POI a level 2 quest to a level 2 POI and so on...