*Disclaimer; I understand it is Alpha and the feedback below is intended to be helpful criticism* Greetings, I purchased the alpha of DayZ Standalone from steam a few days ago and would like to share my initial impressions. I am not a ARMA 2 player, and have never played the mod "DayZ". I am 29 years old and have been gaming for about 10 years regularly. I have played a myriad of games from the Call of Duty franchise to World of Warcraft and many other games between. From an outside point of view the game DayZ is appealing because I too am a hobbyist "prep'er" and can relate to the fantasy of surviving when the world has gone to sh** and we have to survive on our own. My first impressions when I first logged in was an overwhelming amount of confusion. I knew the point of the game would be to survive by gathering food and tools as well as avoiding/fighting zombies and other players. Unfortunately I had no idea how to function in the game, "WASD" and mouse are pretty self-explanatory but the utilization of the "F" key with mouse scroll wheel was something that took me about 20 minutes to figure out while reviewing the function hot key list and testing things. I promptly died about 3 or 4 times over the next few hours as I was starting out. The first death was due to attempting to kill a zombie with my bare hands (I wasn't overly surprised or disappointed there). My second death was due to starvation/dehydration because I ran for about 30 minutes straight in a field never to see a house of any type or any sign of life (I was infuriated with the severe waste of time, and frustrated that I spawned in a location that could be so barren). My third death was forced because I had fallen and broke my leg, at night, so I spent about an hour belly crawling until I finally starved to death (likely the most frustrating thing to happen in a game, being forced to sit and wait to die in the pitch black with no mobility). All deaths since have been due to zombie attacks, horde and non-horde. Once I clearly understood the need to have a plan when you spawn into a game I started to have more fun. Last night I was able to make it about 2 hours inland off the coast, I collected a nice backpack and plenty of food/clothes. I even had a screwdriver to save my precious sardines from spilling! The adventure of exploring barren towns and having to fight off the meth-addict-like-zombies was really a blast because I wasn’t getting destroyed and I was finding things I needed and even making some things by combining items! Group play is a bit of a challenge but topography identification along with online maps makes it possible to meet up though a challenge in itself (which makes it rewarding when you can). I did run across another player when I freshly spawned and he was very friendly and even gave me a bag and coat, which was greatly appreciated. One thing that is difficult to me is losing 100% of the items I find. I truly wish there was a way to keep one or two items on death so you don’t have to get lucky to find a nice canteen again or something like that. The other part of the game that is a bit frustrating is there is no reward system, maybe you should have a player item that changes based on hours played, times spawned, time spent alive, etc. In most games players like to show off what they have accomplished like total time alive (colored beanies that have various color based on rank, then once you spend enough time alive you get a jacket (but no beanie) upon spawn, again with colors/designs based on rank) I am sure I will have more feedback as I continue to play and learn about the game. Thanks, Tommy TL:DR; I hated the game for the first few game hours because I was bad at it. Once I learned how to play I started to enjoy it. I would appreciate if the developers could incorporate a way to make death not as big of a letdown, let me pick one item (4 slot) limit to keep upon death or graphically different rank based items (visual difference only) 04-28-15 I logged in about 2100 hours EST last night to a fresh spawn on the north east coast. I promptly looked around for zombies and players and headed to the nearest road. I headed north (directions at this point were determined by sun location) on the railroad until I reached a town. From the outskirts of the town I evaluated to see if there were zombies or players lurking about within the town. All looked clear so I went in to scavenge for food and clothes. I found a canteen, bomber jacket, cargo pants and a burlap sack + rope within about 30 minutes of combing through houses. Once I had my hunger, thirst and warmth sorted I decided to figure out where I was. I was in the town of Svetlojarsk and had a meeting point set up to the southwest about halfway across the map. I started making my way southwest and explored the northeast airstrip, I found a pristine 1911 as well as a pristine .22 takedown rifle and 50 .22 rounds. Once I started making my way back on the path to my meeting point, I got to the edge of Dubrovka. Here I paused to review my surroundings and I saw a lone zombie in front of a house behind a fence. I decided to test out my .22, first thing I noticed, I couldn't use iron sites. I am a Master at Arms vet and I prefer iron sites on all weapon systems I use(personal preference). I don't really get what the purpose of making a .22 so inaccurate is, they are famous plinkers and always fun for target shooting. Anyways I got the zombie down even though it hit me a couple of times, I used a rag to bandage and another zombie apparently had been attracted to the sound and arrived on my back while I was plugging my bleeding skin. At this point I swapped to my axe and attempted to chop its head off, only to be knocked unconscious. "You are dead" was soon to follow. I learned my lesson last night, using guns are not worth it, I can usually kill a zombie with an axe in just a few hits and barely get hurt myself.
