Tyshalle

I pretty much agree. I haven't been playing long, but I will say that the thing I love most about the game so far is stalking around the woods, safely avoiding the towns and other players and zombies, and then slowly sneaking up into small buildings and farms and such that I come upon in my travels, looking for loot. Not having zombies in the woods allows the anticipation and anxiety to build the closer I get to these buildings. To me, the forests are a place of near-safety from zombies, where the real threat is happening upon other players who might be looking for a fight. If zombies started showing up everywhere, it'd kind of ruin the whole feel of the game for me.

Even if people use VoIP programs, it would significantly diminish people's ability to send out server-wide information unless everyone in a given server is using the same VoIP, which seems both unlikely and also highly annoying for anyone who would accept such a thing. The problem IMO is not that friends are able to talk to each other when they're on opposite sides of the map. The problem is that there is a constant stream of people you don't know talking who are miles away, not affecting you, but still bugging you. It's also less realistic. It's one thing to have less realism because you choose to (i.e. using a VoIP), but it's another to have a lack of realism be the default.

Yes, scrap them. I'm a fan of letting players choose their own skins, but I think forcing appearance changes based on whether you're a murderer or not is far too gamey in a game that successfully goes for full immersion and realism in most other ways.