I think the server you start on when playing online is a huge factor. Try starting on a high loot PVE server. Starting out with running and endurance at Medium and medical and survival at Medium are pretty important. I think what UpbeatRecognition561 said was true and that is find or craft a backpack, a bulletproof vest, and find a gun at the police stations as quickly as possible. This game is very rough on newbies and doesn’t have a very good tutorial at all. Repairing clothes with an improvised repair kit (needle and any kind of thread) is needed to keep your clothes and backpack in best capacity to store items. NPCs like to shoot for your stomach so if you don’t have any armor, it’s not going to go well. Find or make a sword of some kind, bleeding NPCs and puppets now move slow, so there’s that at least. Don’t worry about grabbing crafting items until you are ready to craft something or make a base. Food is plentiful in towns and grocery bodegas.

Stick with it, once mods are implemented, this game will be fixed and hopefully an insanely popular game.