About map and my “third option”:
I did like pristine and devoid landscape that silently screaming at you “something big hit a huge fan” and then you watch exactly what hit said fan.
But it fould be logical conclusion with all that militarized neutral Sweden in general and Ostertorn in particular won’t go down without fight. Trench warfare at south Farmlands are themselves are natural, but it cringes that it’s only south part that is heavily scarred. And fights were on very close range, almost melee - I blame game’s scale, so that ain’t much of an issue.
Most cringe I got is why south region? Well, I get that Torsberga long-range artillery is pot with sweets, but FNIX built it own gun, that would be most logically to place on high ground of Rusaberget (highest hill) for range and view (well, “I see everyone, then everyone can see me”).
I’d expect “FNIX Plague” would start from either FOA facility (SW of North Coast) or Muskudden Port complex (Mountain region west) with outposts on military bases (like on current F23, but something more hazardous than black box of nothing.
Third, these changes would tell tales for those who watched these lands changes (who played game prior FR), but for completely new people it won’t say anything, they might not know how severe changes are.
Before anything, thank you all for participating.
The inbetween results are quite interesting!!!
Much appreciated, all!!!
From what I think to ‘understand’, sir, is that the devs slowly add more and more devastation to the map.
It began with the “red Alien constructs” (well, not literally alien, of course), and later new alterations came along.
Now, I can be wrong, but it is not unlikely that these alterations will keep coming, sir, and these gradually will move North.
Or, at least, that seems to be the most logical theory so far. 
Thoughts, anyone?
I FULLY agree.
But…
This happens in every game that makes such alterations, sir.
Those that come in later, missed out on the earlier things.
Where old farts like us actually knew the older land, newcomers… can only learn through videos from the past, sir.
However, I do not think, it will be an issue?
Do you, sir?
Thoughts, anyone?
The solution would be for at least the Fnix Structures (infection) to only appear after initiating Alpine Unrest(or finishing the game for those without DLC) but that depends from the game engine and from the Devs, it might originate or not serious bugs for the game.
So, yes newcomers won´t know how the game was before.
Ive been thinking along the same lines, to have a dynamic map that changes depending on storyline progression, but ive realized it would cause issues.
Some obvious plot holes:
Where was the army while the new player goes through the archipelago and enters the farmlands?
How can the army have these massive battles across the farmlands when not a single living soldier is to be found anywhere in the game?
Also, usually the military is the first line of defence, but we´re stumbling over resistance camps all over the archipelago, witch suggests that the army has already fallen before the new player even starts the game.
If we were to revert the map to its original state and start from there, moving towards the map we have today, we are bound to find combat squads somewhere, still living and kicking.
Or at the very least, some resistance fighters here and there (like Fnix Rising DLC).
When i started playing, the most compelling part of the game was the exploration, not just the map, but the story; what happened while “i” was on that trip with my friends?
Where have all the people gone? And why?
To have the world reveal its secrets, finding out about the machine invasion by seeing the battlescars on the enviroment, getting pieces from letters and notes, as well as the occasional dead body really(!!) helped build the atmosphere.
As i see it, the current battlescarred map is more realistic and believable than the original map, swedes wouldnt just drop dead, they would use whatever means necessary to fight the enemy.
Hemvärnet (home guard) are trained by the army in guerrilla tactics, improvised traps and constructions meant to block or slow the advancing enemy are textbook examples and the surviving members would surely lead the resistance as the military command fell.
So a few crashed cars and a Stridsvagn on fire is simply not enough damage to explain the complete lack of living souls as it was pre-DLC.
I can swallow the fact that Fnix builds a bunch of structures in the south coast region and farmlands, a bunch of mechanical constructors might be working while the player is at Himfjäll and therefore unseen by the player, but i cant see a reason for the delay.
As a machine, Fnix is supposed to make pragmatic decisions with lightning speed, so a construction team should be working as the fighting begins, if not sooner.
Fnix doesnt build a whole list of buildings/features as an afterthought, its all part of the Plan.
And sure, we can explain it away by pretending that tanks, harvesters and runners were temporarily assigned construction work, but that really doesnt feel right…
I have always tried not to think too much about the plotholes in GZ, but the plotholes are in fact growing in numbers with the revamp of the map. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the revamp.
#1 worst plothole: The Resistance. If TR only existed on Himfjäll I’d have no problem with it, but in order to swallow TR’s presence on the Archipelago and South Coast, you need to alter the date the player arrived at Yttervik. There is absolutely no possible way TR would have established bases that far south on the map, in only the few days the player was away. TR wouldn’t even exist at all, mere days after the cataclysm. This also ties into…
#2 worst plothole: FNIX structures. Not the structures themselves, but their location. If you start a new game you are to think that it’s november 10’th, but in FNIX Rising it’s supposed to be late december. Yet you can start FNIX Rising after playing GZ for just a couple hours. You really need to close your eyes and hold your breath when you walk past TR’s destroyed camp at the end of Archipelago… But then you get to the South Coast vanilla missions, so I don’t really know how this is supposed to be believable. FNIX couldn’t build the structures over the weekend you were gone either… A solution might have been to instead place the FNIX stronghold in the far north. Or even better, not rushing FNIX Rising and instead placing it on a whole new island!
My explanations to my votes:
For map, i picked “Other”.
For me, i like the mix of old and new. Highly populated areas and large open fields would have most devastation (new map style) while remote houses, in the middle of nowhere, are just empty and abandoned (old map style).
Highly populated areas (towns, military bases), would have great importance to humans and thus, these spots are fiercely guarded. Where the end result would be loads of dead machines/people lying around, few Stridsvagn 103 tanks destroyed, buildings blown up and riddled with bullet holes.
Open fields would have more destroyed Stridsvagn 103 tanks, military trucks/cars and more destroyed bigger machines lying around. Implying that the motorized armor group was used to combat bigger machines. E.g like the battle scene just North of Mullvadsberget Tunnels.
Remote houses, in the other hand, e.g Närkudden safehouse and Sandsnäs (both SW from Muskudden, near the coast), would remain completely unharmed, but are empty and abandoned, just like they currently are in the Mountains region.
The more towards the center of battle you travel, the more destruction you are going to see. And the further away you travel, the less destruction you’ll see. A gradual transition to say so.
As for more challenging game goes, i also picked “Other” and machine AI.
Besides smarter AI, i’d also like to see removal of Machine Loot and localized storage.
Machine Loot, well, that i explained in another topic:
And now, about localized storage.
GZ without localized storage is challenging game where you have to make hard decisions of what to keep and what to leave. And by localized storage i mean Plundra and Recycling Station storage.
Player has 96 kg worth of carry capacity (up to 112.999 kg when walking) and that is more than enough to carry all the weapons, ammo, gear and recycling materials as well. And the idea of GZ is to “keep moving”, rather than settling down in a “safe spot”.
Having no place where you can retreat to, to resupply, gives the game a good, survival element since you’ll never know if the next town/house you’re running towards is relatively safe from machines or you’ll walk into ambush. This keeps player constantly on the edge.
Do note that above is my explanation of why i picked “Other” options and it is not open for criticization.
I’ve chosen the option of something different for the map not to have something different, but preserve the old and new. It’s a mixed field of change the map, yes, but not too much. I agree that some beauty has to be absolutely preserved, but I also agree that the previously flat fields needed change. Not all the fields should be destroyed, but just by looking what areas got changed and how they feel, you realize why this was performed. I completely understand the map change so far, but I’d like to HALT the devs in destroying further fields, rather revamp the terrain in ways that change up a bit of forestry with more variation for rocks appearing as this cover or have patches of less trees, in cities change the house layouts and outside decorations individually for each house. The Archipelago type of revamp is still the incredibly good part of the changes that come with this land.
EDIT: Also turns out I’ve basically said the same about old and new like what aesyle posted.
“I would love something entirely different” I would personally love to fight against machines in a more Urban location, I’m talking 3 story buildings, maybe a larger city of sorts (Östervik was disappointing) I would also like to see some highways that are littered with abandoned cars
Well, I’ve voted in the new map, but now I want this one.
Ostervik was indeed disappointing.
A real small city would be interesting, the problem is, they had the opportunity to use Ostervik for that and missed the shot, the only remaining place is the biggest of the 3 “empty” islands.
An highway does to not seem viable because of the Islands size.
If one day they make a Generation Zero 2, maybe we can get a mix of Urban, industrial and countryside areas 
Since they aren’t done revamping the map, Östervik could still be turned into something epic.
The new map is the least of my problems with GZ. I like a bit of devastation, but cannot work out why it is in a field in the Farmlands. The place to have had it would be round the big bases, because that is what it would be worth defending and where could be defended quickly (due to lots of soldiers on hand with tank and artillery support). Torsburger and Normyra would be the scenes of defensive battles lost, for several kilometers around them. As you approached, you would start seeing skirmishes, with dead dogs and soldiers as the partrols clashed, then you’d have roadblocks and strongpoints overwhelmed, and finally a hasty trench system and fixed battles and finally the bases in ruins. What were they defending in the Farmlands? How did they get there from their bases? Why weren’t the bases defended?
That would make sense, but few of the changes do make sense.
I get that the game did not take off as the DEVs (Paul) wanted. Instead of taking a long view, and believing in the concept as they had (which was totally fab) they seem to have tried to recruit players of completely different games. So we got the Plundra, then we got the inexplicable Rivals. Then we got “Waves”. God help us for Waves! The wave would be 500 machines, if they caught you - and that’s the point. In this scenario you cannot defend as a teenager what the Swedish Army cannot defend with tanks and artillery. Now we’ve got “teleporting machines”! With what 80s technology? Exactly?
We’re going to end up with a shoot-em-up.
Now, it all could have been done. The Rival wouldn’t “Spawn”! How? How can it? It should have been a special creation made by Von Ullmar, emitting only from a captured factory, which would then chase you. Wherever you kill a machine, the Rival would immediately run towards your position, so that when you went into action, you had seconds or minutes to finish the action and get out, before the Rival arrived with speed and overwhelming firepower. Or do you kill machines deliberately and ambush it when it arrives? Your choice, and bang on game strategy.
Bases. Oh please! How can you defend what the Swedish Army can’t? It could have been done, if one of the mountains was riddled with caves and entrances. The caves would have choke points where Hunters couldn’t get in and you had to run from one entrance to another, through the system, to defend here or there, guided by the gunfire from NPCs, which after you had defended, the machines would give up and besiege, except that there are too many exits, and they can’t cover them all. That’s believable.
We started so incredibly well. I came upon a farm yesterday I’d never been to before. There had been a party, with a band on a little stage and the party had overflowed into the barn and outside, and it took me back to parties exactly like it I had in the 70s and 80s. I wish I had been at that one - it looked great, but everyone was gone, and it was terribly sad. Wonderful!
Bases, Rivals, Teleporting Machines, Waves, Hordes, Crafting - these are all bolt-ons from other games. Sweeties to attract players. I don’t believe that the strategy will work. Other games do them better, but including them in this game makes it less likely to win in the long term. Some form of advertising would have worked better.
(BTW - I have no problems with Dogs carrying medkits - they were almost certainly designed to fight in close support of living soldiers, so it would make sense that every Dog carries a medkit as standard and might not be operable without it. The others, no. I don’t mind ammo from machines, but it should be more of whatever that machine was using - find a machine that uses what you use and get 150 rounds off it.)
About the bases, I agree. The character is trying to find out what happened, who the enemy is and how to get rid of it, and not to repopulate an empty island.
Again, I agree. The damage to the bases is minimal, almost nonexistent. On the farms there are trenches in the middle of nowhere. Why? Just because there is space?
This is important. To maintain coherence this should always be kept in mind.
This is good. Before August’s update the battles were extremely punitive, it was frustrating to try to keep your character alive. For me there was no room for any other strategy than to hit and run. A fnix hunter with a shoulder weapon? Fire all your weapon ammo and run. Two? You’re dead, rise and repeat. After August the machines are stupid, you can run between hunters, dogs and harvesters and barely take damage. Rival’s don’t do much better.
Yes, there is new evidence of pre-war inhabitants and survivors everywhere. Little bits of people’s daily lives. It feels like an environment that was once alive and now dead and not just an empty place that you don’t care.
What are those? I don’t remember seeing that, except for the support called by the harvesters. And waves? Where?
Again, I agree. Makes sense, have been debated before.
Yes, and I believe that’s the crafting system can have a huge importance in this. Loot all the .45 of a hunter, make the 5.56 you use.
This is good.
The why & how the crater and devastation appeared is yet unknown. You can speculate however that something catastrophic happened in a underground FNIX transport network. (there is evidence this network exist), and that there probably was a gigantic disastrous explosion.
Maybe the Reaper malfunctioned when it was transported and destroyed a large part of the underground tunnel intersection with a cataclysmic thermobaric blast witch created the enormous crater and devastated everything within a certain radius of its epicenter.
Waves at the hotel and at the hilltop base in FNIX Rising. Teleporting machines supporting Harvesters and new Reaper. Why can’t they run in from 400 metres? What difference does it make, apart from breaking immersion?
I’ve just spent some time looking at the new Avalanche game Second Extinction. I would rather stick pins in my face than play it - it has everything I hate about that genre. Let’s not do that to Gen Z. But that’s where we are going. Why?
Bring back April 2020 as it’s own max difficulty level.
You remember that era, right? When everyone except me and a handful of other people whined about the difficulty? When robots acted like robots by being precise and fast acting?
God I so miss the April 2020 patch. The most fun I’ve had in a long time until the game was softened up.
The improved reaction times and increased aggression was good, no one ever denied that but as the developers themselves pointed out, the update was full of bugs and they broke the game. Back then I also explained how forcing the player to cheese the bots because everything else gets you killed isn’t good gamedesign. Besides, the new Soviet machines are exactly like the April 2020 update and they’re just as bad.
Oops I may have resurrected an old thread by accident lol.
But you see good game design caters to as many as you can. They could make an April 2020 difficulty, and if you don’t like it, simply don’t use it. Some of us like the fear a robot puts in you. I absolutely LOVED the challenge of April 2020. It’s what made me keep coming back. And when the game softened up, I was very sad…and frustrated. I have over 300 hours in the game. Believe me I REALLY enjoyed the difficulty. Fast forward to 2022, and we still have Hunters acting like robots purchased at a flea market with poor reaction times and less than capable aiming. April 2020 forced me to plan my attacks via strategic placement of myself and having a plan of escape. Looking at the terrain and figuring out my plan was part of the experience. Now not so much. I used to be scared of the bots. Now…meh. I was looking at the Hunters fighting the ball robots, and I said to myself “Yeah April 2020 Hunters would have turned them into spare parts in a few seconds.”
Now the Russian bots…very cool looking and interesting. I like the Wolf’s gatling gun with its speed and small size making it trickier to land a good shot on. I even WOWed outloud! But the missiles in the game still act like paper airplanes with firecrackers attached to them. April 2020 had proper fast missiles. It’s just too easy to dodge these slow missiles since all you need to do is keep running when at a distance. I mean you see the missiles launch, and you actually have enough time to look at them in the air and ask yourself “which way should I go today” But at least the gatling is a very pleasant surprise. I noticed these bots tend to sleep around in different areas. If you are running around to suddenly see one laying around a building, you are in for a nasty surprise.
Anyways, I will always continue to follow GZ’s progress. Maybe someday I’ll get my April 2020 difficulty back. Maybe someday someone will create a mod to manually make the game like April 2020. In the mean time, I’ll always pop in and out to see how the game has progressed. 
You could just do as many others do, play the tie-one-hand-to-back playstyle. Where you play on Guerrilla, but without experimental weapons or experimental ammo. Abolish fast travel, and no stims. In fact you can make it as difficult as you want. Only one weapon, or no weapons above 3 *, etc.
I could all the time, and I was actually doing that last night. I was snipping the wolf’s weapons with a regular rifle. But all I did was hinder myself vs making them more accurate lol. Killing the beast with a thousand needles 