Despite its hardcore trimmings, it is a surprisingly not so difficult game once you learn how to play. I also think they listened too much to the casual whiners during development, the last area of the game went from being sparse on wood and nails to being laden with it. When i first played it during one of the alphas nighttime on swamp was genuinely difficult because you'd have to constantly be running and gunning due to poor barricade coverage. Now in the final version, i spend many nights barricaded in one room sitting behind a closet with my shotgun and usually never have to deal with more than one or two enemies breaking through max.
Ironically the old woods or whatever might be the hardest area in the game now because very few wood piles and red chompers every night that seem to beeline for barricades to smash them down.
Pretty much true. As I wrote earlier, ideally rep gain would be halved and loot made more scarce. Would be nice if Chapter 1 enemies dealt more damage and had more aggressive movesets as well.
That being said, I figure that people going into the game fresh, without dozens of hours of early access experience, won't figure out how to play optimally until their second playthrough.
I suppose the relatively forgiving dynamic an experienced player is likely to settle into is also well suited for Nightmare difficulty.
