My initial feedback after playing 15 hours

[Redd]

Hey everyone, first let me preface this by saying I am really enjoying the game! I am glad I made the purchase and am also glad I could help contribute to future development of the game. I am really excited to see where this game can go, kudos so far on the experience. I wanted to give you my constructive criticism and feedback after playing a little bit.

1)The first and biggest issue that I ran into is the game feels very restricted in that you can't endlessly survive. No matter how skilled you are, or how careful you are with resource management and protection from elements and fatigue/hunger/hydration you will eventually die. This seems due to there being a limited map with no respawn and a finite amount of resources. Even with animal respawns eventually you run out of ammo/bandages/rifle durability and it's game over. I think you should be rewarded for playing skillfully and punished for making bad decisions. As it stands right now there is no reward for doing all the right things except you live a little bit longer before dying.

2)I am not sure if I like the idea of the leaderboard because it might influence the direction of the game to a more competitive feel. I have already seen people posting guides to survive as long as possible that basically consist of doing all the hub loot runs, and then sitting in a cabin and sleeping all day with minimal caloric expenditure to maximize the number of days you live. It's cool to have the leaderboard to see how well you did compared to other players, but once the game starts getting balanced around it is what my concern is. I feel like you should just play the game, not have weird gimmicks to get your name on a leaderboard.

3) Right now the numbers feel pretty unbalanced in a number of ways. I fully understand that this early in Alpha there is going to be a lot of tuning to get these to where they feel right, but I just wanted to throw my two cents in on this. It's kind of a large category so I will give a few examples of the ones I think are way off:

-Right now calories burned is really high. My resting metabolic rate is 1800 calories for the day, so 75 calories an hour. Of course with physical activity that shoots way up, but right now I see my character just sitting in a cabin burning 230 or more per hour. He would have to consume a diet of 5,500 calories a day just to break even.

-Item degradation seems like it's really way off from where it should be. The can openers I have sitting in my kitchen draw have opened hundreds and hundreds of cans with no real signs of wear. I can understand maybe if the can opener I find in game was found outside exposed to the elements, but if it's been sitting in a drawer it should be able to open more than 10 cans before breaking. The same goes for the rifle. When I go to the range I can put over 1,000 rounds through my rifle before I really even have to worry about cleaning it, let along having anything break. Rifles can be used and abused with hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammo before something breaks, and typically it's something minor like ejector springs or a bolt. Guns don't really "break" unless something serious happens like falling into a metal grinder. I understand for game mechanics wanting to add item wear and tear, but it should be way more generous than it is now. Maybe add a game mechanic where we can find oil to maintain certain items.

-Food and water danger levels seem to escalate very quickly. I can be fully quenched and fed and go to bed and wake up dangerously dehydrated.

These are just my initial impressions though so I wanted to pass along my feeling on game so far. Overall however I am really enjoying it, thank you for all the work you have put into it thus far.