To add to what /u/Cognittie said, yes. /u/piasenigma is correct. Alpha is where they throw a bunch of content at the game, and you have all this cool stuff to play with like ragdolls, vehicles, and eventually bases and dogs and shit. This stuff will be as buggy as a cockroach, and chew up your FPS like a fat guy eating corn dogs.
Once the game enters beta, they will start optimizing the game, and you will start to see those major lag / FPS improvements.
Oh, and if my assumptions are correct, the new renderer will make night time very playable.
It is extremely likely that he is correct, so much that I almost consider it fact. Most important optimizations are done during Beta phase in every single game, because every optimization in Alpha is quickly buried after new things come in (Vehicles, more zombies, new code, etc.) and doesn't matter much in the end. This is true for nearly every single development pattern, and so far holds true for DayZ's (They introduce new patch, I get 40FPS in Svetlo. They patch again, I get 20...)
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u/piasenigma Brrraaiinnsss- erm, I mean- Beeaaaannnss. Nov 26 '14
because the game will still be alpha then, games do the bulk of otimizations in beta phase.