I've waited to give my two cents so I could try a few different things out and can now comment with an educated response. It seems to me the new mod has not increased friendliness, granted, this could just be the servers I'm playing on. The problem isn't really zombies anymore either - if you happen to get swarmed, just run for a hill and then get them to run down it behind you, I've literally cleared about 20 Zed's by doing this. The main issue is the lack of survival gear you have directly at the start of the game now. The average life for myself has gone down from a good few hours to a day, right down to probably in the hour region, if that. It really does come down to spawning locations these days and I'm on the fence each time i spawn to try for a better location I know well and can get a gun from quickly. This typically is no fun. Changing something simple like starting with less ammo or something similar would resolve this problem greatly or even implementing a way to de-aggro zeds or even go hand to hand would help.