7 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:I realize that you never played A16, but no, that's not the reason. The AI in A16 was in many ways profoundly stupid. Zombies basically just ran straight toward you from wherever they spawned. If you had a 5 block thick wall on one side of your base and a 1 block thick wall on the other side, if they spawned on the side of the 5 block thick wall, they'd try and tunnel through that. If you dug a 5 block wide trench all the way to bedrock all around your base, with bridges in each of the cardinal directions, unless you did something to slow them down, they would happily fling themselves into the trench (and even if you did something to slow them down, you'd still have some who would fling themselves into the trench.)
Heck, I once built a 5 block deep base with a 10 block long ramp coming down to me (completely uncovered) and what I ended up with was a group of zombies milling around above my head come morning. I'd even put in doors that I left open to try and lure the zombies down, and they didn't go for it.
This is a base I built in A16. That trench goes all the way down to bedrock (that's the whitish bit you can see on the near side, that's what bedrock used to look like.) I had zombies fling themselves into that trench and almost undermine my base. With the new AI, that wouldn't happen, they'd just happily cross the bridges.
I mean, yes, I could have easily built a base that could withstand any horde (heck, like I mentioned you could just build an elevated base and stand there all night, since the zombies didn't try to attack things when they couldn't reach you, which was admittedly a problem, and why I mentioned adding the destroy area mode.) But I could also try all kinds of designs to see what worked. Now, like I said, the zombie AI is so predictable that I know whether a base is going to work (for the most part...I had one fail when they changed the length of path a zombie would follow) before I place the first block.
I built another base that was basically an octagon with tunnels to the center in each of the cardinal directions, the sections between the tunnels completely filled with reinforced cement blocks (hoping the zombies would "slide" along the angled blocks and end up in the tunnels) and they simply tried to dig their way through the walls (the zombies always came from NE/SE/NW/SW on horde night back in those days.) Nowadays, they'd have gone directly to the tunnels.
The point is, I could build these things and I would never know until horde night if they would work. Sometimes they worked. Sometimes they were spectacular failures. But I had to actually try them against the horde to see what would happen. I couldn't manipulate the AI to just walk into my death trap in an orderly fashion. And that's what I miss, the ability to try out ideas and see if they would work, not to be able to plan out a perfect base without issues.
If I could make myself forget how the AI works, that would be great, but I can't. Hence, boredom ensues.
I think it's just a different effect with the same outcome. By that, I mean that in A16, you knew how the zombies worked. Yes, they'd attack from whatever side they were on without really having any intelligence to speak of. Now, they'll follow the easiest route if there is one available, with some going into destroy mode occasionally. In both cases, you know how they'll react and what they will do. It may be true that in A16, they'd just attack from wherever they came from and so you if you didn't design the base to work for all directions of attack, you wouldn't know if it'll hold up because it may hold up if they come from a certain set of directions but not from another set of directions. Versus now, where you always know the route they'll take and so can more easily determine if it'll work. Is that what you mean? To me, it's all pretty much the same and just a different base design and planning being needed in A16 in order to know what will or won't work. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean? Maybe you are just meaning that it is easier to know how well it will work now? Which I guess is what you said initially and what I suggested you might be able to say if you played A16 now. *shrug* 
I suppose without seeing it in action, I probably can't really see what the difference is. To me, if you know they all come at you head-on, it doesn't seem like it would really be any harder to know what will work than if you know they'll take the path of least resistance.
I think if they were to update the AI to use a variety of different things, it would go a long way towards making horde night an actual challenge. Have some going straight at you, regardless what's in the way. Have others follow the easiest path. Have others follow a more difficult path. With variety, you can't know as easily what the zombies will do and can't exploit them as easily.