This is of course just my opinion, but I personally started seeing the game going downhill after A10.4. There was of course a few awesome stuff added like vehicles and some nice graphics rework, but the game overall was still going downwards. The fact that so many things kept getting redone is in my opinion just a waste of time and resources. Had they actually planned the process better, they never would have needed to redo things... at least not nearly as many times as they did anyway.
- Crafting systems dumbed down a lot, removing the option to make a lot of stuff from scratch.
- Skills / Perks system is still a joke.
- Looting is so level gated and predictable / boring that it's not even worth wasting much time on anymore.
- Role play elements are discouraged when playing solo and traders are too heavily encouraged.
- Stealth no longer possible most of the time.
- World still feels empty and boring (in terms of activity) with little to no reason to explore since everything (within your level) is within view distance unless you spawned in far away from trader.
- Zombie placements in POIs are predictable and unrealistically dumb. Jump scares are not a thing in this game since it's constant with every single POI.
- "Random" Hordes spawning in within view and GPSing to your exact location is and always will be lame. This also includes the 7th day base defence portion of the game which is still far too easy to cheese and defend against.
- Mining deep underground is now pointless and the terrain seems to magically reset itself now which is also dumb. Also, caves removed. Giving us less play-style options
- Not being able to use any of the water in the world for no apparent reason is really dumb, solar panels being as rare as they are...
- Food / water consumption and stamina drain is still poorly done.
- etc...
Lets not forget all the bugs that have existed for many years, like:
- Weird texture / lighting issues where you sometimes see a glow and/or white lines outlining trees and objects at certain times of day.
- Terrain collapsing despite supporting everything correctly
- Countless FPS issues / stutters / micro stutters
- Having too much within a single chunk area causes instabilities.
- pop-in issues
- vehicles disappearing
- etc...
Literally everything in the game feels like the devs are trying so hard to control the difficulty and "balance", but in reality, all they're really accomplishing is making the game a lot less enjoyable and setting us down a very narrow path. The game still doesn't have a goal or story / lore. No NPCs of any kind unless you include a few statues in an indestructible world chunk area that sell you stuff and always have an optional mission for you. We just aimlessly go around collecting stuff and levelling up to I guess stay alive and see tougher zombies matching your level. Without a goal or purpose in the game, what's the point? 11 years of development and that's where we're at.
So ya, why would anyone be hyped for this game anymore?