Saying goes “You can choose the game, but you can’t change the rules”. But it’s only true if referee is not sleeping or taking bribes. This game and it’s community has more problems than they would like to admit.
But nice things first.
I was introduced to this game few months ago by accidentally watching short review of it. Now, in retrospective, remembering reviewer’s unadulterated excitement I understand that he was a little less noob than me. At first I was intrigued by the overall concept. When I started to play I was charmed by art style and atmosphere. Soon I felt a little overwhelmed by it’s mechanics, but overall it seemed fit so I proceeded to try to learn about them more. Passing by I found out about custom clients, but as far as it seemed to me, it made graphically appealing game into checkers, and my intention wasn't to play in “excel table”. Naively I thought that if it gave some feelable advantages developers would be banning it.
Then the day came, when my character, while outside the settlement, was cornered by two characters and… rowboat. Needless to say, that he didn't get out of it alive. Mechanics are mechanics – I don't mind them being exploited. But it was clear to me, that in area with reduced visibility because of trees and angle of native clients viewpoint it was quite impossible. Not saying I could be getting out of it alive, but it broke immersion quite a bit. But as decision not to use custom client was my choice I swallowed it.
But Pandora's box for me opened when I decided to read through forum posts from some “veteran/hardcore/competitive/etc...” players and watched explanatory video from one of like them…
Custom client was just a top of it. Starting from game changing monetization from developers which also resulted in players paying to other players with real money for letting they characters live and finishing with using bots and scripts as a given. Referee takes bribes and closes the eyes. Nice… and “very immersive”.
But the silliest in this situation, in my “humble noob opinion”, were complaints of not wiping game worlds frequently enough, because all the game content is kinda reachable in less than three months and it becomes boring. I would guess it isn't possible without third party programs which, let’s be honest, is nothing less than cheating. So you literally are asking developers to adjust game mechanics because players like you aren't capable to play by the rules? It reminds me of kindergarten situation where kids decide to play a game and then changes the rules on a fly until everybody are annoyed and bored and nobody plays anymore. And then the same players complain of lack of enough other players. Funny little people…
Setting aside that to some extent there is clear developers fault encouraging such behavior, let me finish with citation from classics:
“Persist in the doomed world you have created”.