YMMV / DayZ

• Audience-Alienating Premise: A large chunk of what harmed the standalone version of the game was that the developers declared fairly early on that it would be based on the original mod. This might not sound like a big issue, except that at the time, there were dozens of different variants spread out across many different servers, and even servers that did play something close to the original mod usually added some things to spice it up. By that point, the fanbase had cut its teeth on the more heavily modded variants that did things like flesh out the combat system, add extensive basebuilding mechanics, or even just put in new encounters and enemy types. This resulted in the eventual standalone version feeling very barebones, since it was essentially starting over from square one without any of what the fans had come to expect. It certainly didn't help that various other indie games at the time were starting to pull the best ideas from those mods, meaning the players could get an experience like what they'd had with modded DayZ in a ton of games, but not the game calling itself by that name.
• Broken Base: Between DayZ players and ARMA II players. A number of DayZ players find the core game to be a boring, obtuse game that only Armchair Military types would even want to bother playing. Meanwhile, ARMA II players get annoyed by the fact that DayZ and mods like it are going against the core game's strong teamwork-based mechanics and military simulation theme.
  • Many players are angry that, despite being in development for three years, DayZ is still in alpha, with the game still plagued by bugs and hackers with very few features being added to it. Just check the Steam reviews; the reviews users vote as most helpful are all negative, calling out the developers for the drawn out development time.
  • There's also a division due to some thinking than the standalone goes overboard in trying to be a survival game to the point of being unfair.
• Just Here for Godzilla: DayZ has done this to the original ARMA II that the Steam store page for the basic Arma 2 game has a service warning (usually reserved for serious regional compatibility issues or the like) informing the user that the mod requires the game's expansion pack and providing a link to a suitable discount bundle.
• Paranoia Fuel: The other survivors. Even if you team up and make friends with someone, there is nothing stopping them from stabbing you in the back later (or you from doing the same for that matter). A writer at The Escapist has even commented that the primary source of tension and horror in DayZ is not the zombies, but the other players.
  • This will often result in the most horrifying noise being not the groan or barking of a zombie, but distant gunshots or the roar of an engine.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters is the inevitable result.
• Reformulated Game: Mini DAYZ for mobile phones is a completely offline (while it can serve ads if the device is online) game as a 16-bit top-down reinterpretation of the game.