Released day one for free on Xbox game pass, State of Decay 2, developed by Undead Labs and published by Xbox Game Studios, is one of the longest-lasting exclusives still with an active development team and strong player base. One of the weaker parts of State of Decay 2 is the infestations that randomly spawn throughout the map. There's very little benefit to wiping them out besides some influence and the building itself to scavenge or build an outpost in.
The siege system is no better. Sieges are on a constant timer every 40 or so minutes, with the noise level your community makes being the deciding factor on how strong the assault is. The latest State of Decay 2 developer live stream revealed a big change coming to infestations and the siege system. This update will completely change the way the game is played similar to what the plague territory update did.
With the future update, your first infestation will come straight from a plague heart. After an allotted amount of time, the infestation will upgrade itself to become even more deadly. You will be able to see how long until it upgrades on the map in the form of a circle around the infested building icon, as well as its level in the form of dots on top of the building where the more dots means the more dangerous it becomes. The infestation will also have the ability to send infestation hordes out to inhabit a new building creating more infestations. Even your outposts can be targeted by the hordes. While you won't lose the whole outpost, you will lose the benefits provided from it.
If you ignore the infestations long enough and allow them to inhabit buildings too close to your base, they will send hordes towards it. Unlike the current system, you will have the ability to intercept incoming hordes that will be visible on your map and take them out before they reach your base, ending the siege. Siege risk will still be a factor but instead of determining how often sieges occur, they determine the severity of the attacks, as well as, how many zombies and freaks join the assault.
The update is said to be coming sometime in 2022 - most likely within a few months. The update is already out on the public test realm for Steam. As it is a very large and complicated change that requires a lot of time to prefect, we could be seeing it either much later than their prediction, but it depends on how well the public testing goes. Undead Labs have stated they plan to support State Of Decay 2 throughout 2022 with multiple other updates cooking behind the scenes.
