My experience and feedback over survival aspect of the game

[Archael]

I wanted to try and test most survival experience, vanilla game can provide (its survival game after all)
Most issues i have with current state of the game is that its oriented over fps rather than survival, so i tuned up some things and lowered others:
- Difficulty: insane, because if zombies are toughter, simple headshot may not be enough so other tactics like sneak, bleed, dismember, may become usefull.
- Exp multipler is not rellevant but playing solo, i gave 200%, tho i still think about it.
- Bloodmoon: off, or 30 days, not regular 7 because everyday life is suppouse to be difficult enough. Maybe in mp i could make it more frequent,
- Bloodmoon zombie count: 4, becuase i cant give 2.
- Zombie speed: walk everywhere, but only because on higher difficulties zombies have not only more health but also can get into rage mode and start running.
(It would be much more fair if difficulty could change only chance of getting injury and zombies resistances to status effects, dismember and headshot resistance, while their HP and chance for rage mode should be 2 additional settings)
- Damage dealt to blocks is reduced to 50% for zombies and 75% for players. Zombies are much toughter so player needs additional protection, and i cant imagine how zombies should be able to get through steel wall so easly.
- Loot abundance 25% so that ammo is more scarce, and gathering/mining are more needed.
- Death penalty: Injury
- Airdrop: off

All those changes makes game much more difficult and immersive. Even traders feels much more fair since succesfully finishing a quest is not guaranteed. I did 5 quests and only one was succesfull.
Ammo is more scarce, but range weapon is still superior over melee, even tho melee needs to be close to zombies which increase risk of ijury and death, and melee needs stamina which is much more difficult to get when You respawn having 50% hydration, and water is difficult to get.
Traders feels even less immersive with those settings... how they can live and trade is such environment? Hidden notes of challanges and burried treasures was much better.

So overall, those settings can make game experience be a little more survival like, but it does not fix fudamental flaws game get few versions ago:
game is centered around shooting, at some point no melee weapon is needed, with 25% loot abundance ammo is more scarce, but getting some can help with lot of problems. I think that melee weapon should deal more damage than range because range is more safe, so there could be a strategic decision making.

Why i was not talking about magazines this time?
Because its hard to give conclusion over this. Since quests are more difficult, i cant say if magazines are better or worse, especially that everything is always at deficit (untill 7 day at least since its where i am atm), so scavenging become necessery NOT ONLY for magazines which become additional loot which feels more fair than scavenging and questing just for magazines.

Conclusuion is that game can be felt as survival again, but its not full survival experience, there are still few things that should be touched if devs wants it to be survival game rather than another fps.