We had this guy join us who had never played a PC game before, let alone Arma or any FPS. His friend has played with us for years and having talked about the game for ages (Arma 2 this is) the guy decided to join up and see what the fuss was about. We were doing what we call an ambush mission, we all got into a truck, drove out across the sandy lands of an Afghanistan like map and after about 3 minutes we hit a mine and we all died. Mission over.
The second mission that night we went in a HMMV column, this time in Takistan and the new guy joined the fire team who was in the front vehicle in the column. We got ambushed on the side of a valley, the initial damage taken was from an enemy placed mine - which destroyed the first vehicle and killed the new guy again.
This new guy played for 2 hours, all he did was get into a vehicle with his team mates and get blown up by a mine, twice in a row. We asked him how his first night was and he said "This is awesome".
You have to get a perverse pleasure out of all the training, out of all the tactics, communication and then potentially a good fire fight. Its not going to always be highly intense, you regularly can't find out where the darn enemy is, so you have to pop up, move around etc rather than staying put while taking fire. Sometimes you just get shot once and your dead and other times you clear a load of buildings that has no one in them. But there is no other game that can give you the wide range of combat options and where using real military tactics is a requirement to have a chance of completing the missions. It is an amazing game, nothing else like it exists, and I really think it is best played inside of a community that makes missions and runs a lot of the custom mods. The game becomes great when you play it with a team, soloing isn't really very entertaining.
I am loving the Alpha and beta, the new stances are great, the new vehicle mecahnics, the graphics, the sound its all much improved. The new fog for example is really nice and now we have a lot of our usual mods up (medic system, marker system, weapons and gear layout customisations) we are having a blast. Its not for everyone, just shooting targets can be tricky in Arma 3, but its a game that after 2 years I still haven't mastered, because there is a whole profession to be learned (soldering) to do well in this game.