Atlas (DayZ)

Two days ago I purchased ArmA 2 and the expansion for the sole purpose of playing DayZ, inspired by a good friend and plenty of YouTubers (Totalhalibut, Seananners, Sacriel42). The only thing I played that comes even close to this type of game is Fallout NV with a max load of difficulty increasing mods and maybe Rain Bow Six Vegas: 2 on realistic difficulty. And I love the concept, I'm totally in love with the setting, the zombies, survivor dynamics etc. But I can't get into it - I'm pretty much foreign to Arma and while I did do some of the bootcamp missions it's not a real preparation for the mod itself. I died so many freaking times, I gave it my best shot to stick with it but I can't. Now of course I tried my best to stay out of the aggro range of a zombie but I don't know how far or how close I can get before they see me, some times I'd be prone and they would see me somehow from 40-60 meters away and sometimes I'd be crouching and not get spotted from 10 meters, I'd love to learn, but right now the penalty for failure, the lag and the pretty lengthy setup time is just to steep and I have absolutely no feedback from the game itself to notify me where I went wrong. (not saying there should be I like the current air of uncertainty and the penalty is fine, it's in conjunction with all of the above) Now I learned quite a bit from watching hours of youtube and getting a beginners guide over voip from my friend but the theory and practice are two different things. Out of the say 15 lives (underestimating) I spent in the game I have found one 'gun' a crossbow, with a single bolt, inside a barn. I crossed over to the other side of the barn and somehow a zombie spotted me crouch-walking with shift held down through the opened door and aggroed, ofcourse I missed my shot and died because such is my luck. While I can't say starting with a gun would be better, because I wasn't there when it was still the standard, I can say feeling so utterly defenseless this early in the game is very disheartening and for that I won't be playing for a while. That said I will be keeping my eye on this mod because as I said the concept has captured my heart. One thing I wonder though, how hard would it be to create a few 'bootcamp' missions? Or, alternatively have us start with a gun for the first, say, 5 lives, so when 'newbie' folks like me want to start playing the game, and inevitably f'k up, we have some form of defense, or at least some power and control over the situation. Even if gunshots attract a load of zombies and I'd be overwhelmed in moments, going down in an epic guns' a blazin last stand feels better than sprinting away from a horde of zombies down the field while slowly bleeding to death. Sidenote: Black and white vision? Really? I've been shot, it hurts like a mother after the initial shock of being shot, but I distinctly remember seeing red. Seeing as how well removing color did for the experience for Saboteur (Pandemic, bless them, kicked the bucket right after releasing) it wouldn't be a bad idea to make that an easily accessible option somewhere.. preferably turned off by default.