I’ll ignore the fact that you’ve mentioned only the dangerous progression barriers that could exist. IMO mere survival should be the biggest one, and it comes along with everything such as getting gear, stay fed, stay warm (or cool), basing… Sorting evironment in general and enhancing your skills to sort everthing that comes from there or direct threats that you’ve mentioned. Either way, my 2 cents on these:
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Different kinds of deadzones should be a thing, since there could be wastelands affected by chemical, biological or radioactive hazards, or more evironmental ones, like volcanic or highly freezing areas, or maybe just harsh to travel, like canyons, mountains and dense swamps.
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Here I take variation and statistical increases and blend them together, since there should be different types of turned which have different stats each. Like that, the only factor I see that should affect the turned’s stats in general is difficulty, like it has always been. What we should do there is to sort differente turned by rarity or specific locations on which they are more prone to be wandering. I get this idea merely from here, and little to nothing can change my mind about it since it’s for me the best way it could be implemented.
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Bandits are confirmed and I want to see them in the game. Now, how? Wandering bandits could be a fair threat, but people could see this as a problem, so I suggest that bandits should have their own camps and hideouts, and maybe temporarily roaming around small locations. And about their behavior towards the turned, I think that anything unturned, human or animal, shouldn’t just peacefully wander around along with them (yes, bandits should shoot the turned on sight too).
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About turrets there isn’t that much I can add on, as we’re talking about apocalypse and there shouldn’t be any functional machinery anywhere within the containment zone, unless it’s owned by players or NPC’s. In that regard, if there were turrets on their own, IMO these should be at maps borders and nowhere else.