The only real take-away I'm hearing about the encumbrance vs melee debate, is that skill 0 melee should be even worse.
Those claiming they had no idea how encumbrance affected the game are only admitting that they didn't really look through the character screen. This is a roguelike, and that is a cardinal sin in roguelikes.
As someone who's worn a lot of different backpacks, and layers, and equipment, and etc., and done some actual combat, I can tell you that Everything is harder with more than one layer over skintight ones (and only two of those max), as the clothing binds against itself, causing restriction to movement. Any restriction will not only slow your action, they throw off your coordination. The same holds for just about any other piece of gear.
Anyone that thinks you should be an effective fighter with a pack of any kind, has never actually fought with a pack of any kind. It's not impossible, but you put yourself at a significant disadvantage straight off the bat.
Add to that the expectation people have that a 0 skill character will actually hit often with most any melee weapon, and do enough damage to matter to a zombie is somewhat astounding to me.
Other than making 0 skill even worse in combat, the only idea I have is turning 1/2 or more of the misses into ineffective/glancing/bouncing hits.
I personally think that a lot of the encumbrance numbers are low.
Also, anything in the game called a "backpack" is a bookbag. The other packs IRL have different names in-game, or don't exist.
[/soapbox]