Tartantyco

The amount of zombies isn't horrible, but their spawn is. Rural farmhouses are frequently more populated by zombies than urban centers, zombies frequently spawn right behind you, and they seem to spawn infinitely if you try to kill some in certain places, leaving you swamped by them. I was north of Chernogorsk, near the transformers next to a farmhouse and had to shoot a bandit nearby. That single shot had every single zombie charge me, which was about 8. But the real problem was when I had killed those zombies new ones just spawned in the surrounding area and were attracted by the shots from me killing the charging zombies, so I was stuck in a loop where I'd kill the charging zombies and then the newly spawned zombies would charge me, and that's how it went. So, the current problems are the distribution of zombies in the area, the zombie respawn, and respawns near you. The amount of zombies spawned in an area should be related to what actually exists in that area. Large towns should be very populated while tiny farms in the middle of nowhere should have just a couple. Nothing should be able to respawn within a large radius around you, and the aggro threshold for zombies should be lower. As for life expectancy, if it isn't a substantial amount nobody will keep playing it. The lure is in the survival aspect of your character, not his near certain death after only a couple of hours of playtime, especially when most of that time is spent creeping around and scavenging.