Refunded a few minutes of this post.
The devs have had two weeks to issue fixes to problems they must have known about before release, I'm not talking about bugs with doors but game breaking issues, like the Sheriff Leader Legacy missions. All they can say ASAP. Not good enough.
In a nut shell on the Xbox One X I faced:
Complete failure of the mission line with multiple individual problems that leads to the mission failing completely (Sheriff legacy)
Hard crashes requiring the app to be restarted.
Every so often the game will get sluggish
UI disappearing, sometimes taking the options menu with it
Poor frame rates and performance
Excessive use of motion blur, furthering the poor performance
Graphical issues such as graphics flashing, white lines at night, textures disappearing
AI bugging out, killing the undead only for them to come back...again Enclave survivors disappearing and then dropping from the sky later on or just bugging out completely zombies getting stuck or not responsive, zombies spawning on top of the survivor while you were in the same spot for awhile
Enclaves disappearing from the map, and their missions not showing up resulting in you losing the enclave
Missions failing all the time. One mission I had to kill the plague zombie to protect the NPC but there wasn't one so I had to travel to the other side of the map to find one to kill. Clear infestations more infestations and none spawn or don't register cleared. Mission markers placed outside the map area.
Zombie series deducting ammo but no zombies appearing, sit outside your base ready to shoot them before they get to your walls and they won't spawn but the game counts it as happening.
Car issues, hitting invisible walls, running over previously killed bloaters for them to explode again. Cars randomly exploding, zombies clipping through them and not dying. Disappearing into the ground underneath the car when you walk near them NPCs randomly being ejected James Bond Style
Game camera detaching from player staying at a fixed point while you can run off screen.
Gameplay wise
The game lacks many options from the first one that gave the game replay value, such as breakdown which should have been ready at release, hero unlocking and collection through trackable achievements.
Your article mentions in depth morale and base building which is nonsense they are not in depth at all. All they've added to base building is mods and a couple of new options. You are still forced into the same you can build a base but only at these locations mode as the first one. Morale doesn't serve any purpose, sure when you start out they will complain but after that its cheerful all the way.
You don't need half the facilities, the one you do need such as stores you can only have one.
The game is also excessively easy. There is zero challenge, a horde is not a horde when it has two zombies in it. Ferals don't dodge cars anymore and are a lot weaker in general. In the first game, its the ferals that kept you in check because they could kill a fully levelled and geared character easily.
I can kill any Plague Heart with 3 rounds without attracting any attention (Timberwolf suppressed 50 cal) . Even killing human AI, supposedly more dangerous than the zombies is silly simple with head shotting them.
My last play through, the sheriff, before I refunded I had 8000 influence but nothing to spend it on. I had a surplus of everything and was generating so much ammo rucks it was being wasted. The only thing I ever ran out of was parts from repairing weapons.
You don't need outposts, you don't need plague cure (used it once in 3 play throughs), looting is pointless as the loot you get is often the same gun (anyone want a .22 revolver or a model 70 rifle as I have hundreds at least I did until I salvaged them). Or you don't actually need to loot anything as you just don't need it. Hit the military outposts, since police stations tend to give you a shotgun, mp5 or AR15.
The loot and survivor attributes are really badly weighted which is why you often get identical looking survivors and why you read about people being annoyed at that.
Loot often spawns in the same place in similar houses.
You don't need enclaves, especially since once you have sold them enough stuff to them they don't regain influence so once tapped out they stay tapped out.
I've never run out of anything and my morale is usually empowered.
I've never had to use explosives, or Molotov's which were coveted in the first game.
I've always had an abundance of meds so never needed to make any.
I've not needed to use facilities to boost stamina or health which were life savers in the first one. You also don't need training facilities as you will level up very quickly. It used to take ages to level cardio but you can do it in minutes.
For some reason suppressors don't wear out the gun does, which means if you put one on a bolt action rifle you can kill indefinitely without cost, yeah great change there.
Not that it matters, as firing any gun doesn't really do anything, before not being careful, using a shot gun or a fifty would bring tons of zombies and freaks, now you might get a couple.
The never ending and often material losses are annoying, as are the constant requests for help, the lack of any story elements to interact with except with the broken legacy quests and the missions variety is terrible.
The game is nothing but a port to a new engine. Many of the assets are the same, a few tweaks here and there but no additional changes. They even ported some of the bugs from the first one too.
There were some nice changes sure, loot staying in the containers even after logging out is fantastic (they used to disappear when you logged). The base mods is a nice touch but didnt go far enough to make community management fulfilling. The leader aspect is OK but ultimately pointless and the legacy cards make it even easier. Car upgrades were nice, but since the modified cars spawn in why bother. They often don't add anything tangible either and in case of a couple of the vehicles make it difficult to repair them.
So generally disappointing and I suspect many of those 1 million users were people with gamepass or using a free trial to try the game.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram