I've played at least 40hours on Expy on the busy 1pp server (not the cars one). The Loot economy feels really to revolve around luck as it is, please have a look at the CLE before pushing this patch to stable. It feels to make the early game really quite dull and more importantly where you get mid tier gear like SMGs is the same distance away as where you can get good mil gear. It's made the game all about finding a lucky convoy that's not been looted or a heli etc. You need to get lucky to get good gear, playing it slow and searching hunting areas often falls short of finding a scope and a gun. There are no stab and police vests in the early game and so you it feels like the CLE leaves you with three choices:

1- Gamble on convoy and heli spawns and get lucky or not

2- Run straight to some kind of mili base like Troitskoe after going to a well and gamble you will find stuff when there
3- Slow play to a similar mili base but take many hours to get a BK18 or maybe a CR527 and a handful of bullets if you are lucky but then still be faced with the same gamble of going to a mili base with not much and then getting one tapped by a repeater to uncon because there are no stab/press vests.

The damage system is ruthless on official and I like it the way it is, but it forces you to wear at least a stab vest, not being able to get these before going into the higher tier areas breaks the game.

Guns are so rare, mostly shotguns and CR527s are found in barns but often a very long way into the map. Looting barns is not very exciting, looting in DayZ is actually fun, people enjoy it, even after 12 years or so! But endless looting houses with nothing worth checking and empty police stations feels really dull. Only to go to barn on the edge of town and be guaranteed some kind of average rifle or shotgun. It's making the towns feel redundant, there are no mosins or surprise rifles. The towns need to be worth going to especially in T2/3/4, right not they dont seem worth it.

The CLE as it is now has made the game so much worse, its not about making it easy I would love the game to be harder. But I'd like it to be fun. Why are there no SKS at mili bases? Its not a convoy gun, if you want to make the game harder making the NWAF and most mili bases have SMGs only doesnt seem to be it (to me). Please can you look at making guns like the repeater not spawn in tier 3/4, some guns should be coastal guns, tiering the weapons so we can find P1s, Makarovs, Raks and Glocks in PDs, Repeaters, Sporters, maybe only single barrel shotguns in T1, as well as keeping stabs vests in PDs and on zombies would make for really good coastal fun, then as you go in land there is some progression to better things as you travel.

Making spawned food rarer and increasing animals a touch could make the game feel more survival orientated perhaps, but as it is now there is no incentive to "slow play" the game and really search for stuff, the stuff isnt there. I have to be lucky to find a blaze with a scope after 5 hours of looking, meanwhile a newspawn is picking up a Scar 2mins from spawn at a Balota Convoy just by chance. The current patch is mostly about luck and there is little emphasis on learning the game and the hunting spawns and playing it slowly to earn your gear. It is promoting camping convoy spawns and people are logging in and out by them it feels because its better to do that than spend 3 hours searching for not much.

DayZ loot balance should be about bad guns and vests being on the coast and then some actual progression as you go in land. Right now it feels to be:

"nothing to start, nothing much in the middle, still nothing at the NWAF unless you get lucky on the C130 crates, everything is at Tisy!"

This is making the best map in DayZ feel huge for no reason, its basically "all at Tisy and then convoy/heli spawns" and its actually really bad to play (to me). Of course there is much more to the game than shooting but there is also a lot more to the game than camping convoys and going to all the great and meaningful mili bases just to feel like you wasted your time.

Please please please do not push this patch to stable with this CLE. Make the game harder, sure, but don't make it about luck or running straight to Tisy on an empty official server before switching when you have gear to use it. The map progression is gone on this exp patch.

Play the game