I don’t think it’s been outright said that the concept of static spawn is a bad thing. What is a problem, however, is how it is right now. The high level zombies wandering around or being pulled to the outskirts of a town are a wall to a starting character. Static spawn needs some way to keep the biggest baddest monsters penned in the center of town, or some sort of indication that yes, you are getting near to where the bad things are and you should probably turn back before it’s too late.
The makeshift tool items certainly have helped with this, as with some luck and survival skill you can get enough sinew to make your tools. Rotten berries all over the place makes it difficult as well as you have to rely on getting kills for meat to sustain yourself. God forbid you take meat intolerant. There’s still a few things that are simply impossible to get out in the wilderness though. Books and alcohol spring to mind, which are very useful and require you to go into town. If you’re going in for these things, why did you bother camping out in the woods in the first place though? You were going to brave the towns one way or another after all. Trying things the stealthy way, at night with a crowbar is still very luck based. Who knows if you’ll aggro a zombie that smashes a window that brings the horde down on your head? Either way you’ll have to fight which makes another thing, combat skill, a necessity. It doesn’t feel as though static spawn is opening up opportunities as much as it is shutting them down. You MUST have combat skill, you MUST go into town to get certain gear, simple as that.
There are also those of us that don’t like standing in a window beating zombies to death singly as they try to crawl in, or setting our viewports to huge size and throwing rocks to aggro single zeds. Suddenly you are no longer grizzled apocalypse survivor but instead you are a person sitting at a computer playing a game. It’s very immersion breaking to exploit pathing and movement rules to win out against the horde. As it stands, I tend to make a martial arts character, clear out as much of a town as I can, then loot it as a ‘real’ character I intend on actually playing (Usually a mechanic/speech/electronics type character) I feel this is not how the game is intended to be played, and it’s certainly not much fun to thin out the horde.
I propose that new methods of stealth be added for the low-tech low-supplied individual that doesn’t want to fight. Perhaps an ‘acting’ skill could be added, adding to your chances to succeed at lying to NPCs, but also allow you to zombie shuffle Shaun of the Dead style to creep through a horde without being attacked. Perhaps disguising your appearance and scent with pine needles and mud smeared all over yourself (Zombies certainly don’t attack things other than you unless they’re in the way, so maybe that’s your triffid disguise?) Maybe an easily crafted ‘straw man’ effigy out of sticks and clothes to attract the horde to it.
