I agree with many of the things you bring up, but this is not true. Vermintide 2 followed a similar pattern to that of Darktide, but for slightly different reasons. They launched at 75k, dropped two thirds of the player within a month, and dropped below 10k within two months. If that will be better or worse than the current release is hard to tell.
If I remember correctly the main gripes at VT2 launch were:
- the many backend errors - FS didn’t expect the large amount of players (and certainly other things as well)
- the many many bugs - took development time from other thing, most fixes they applied broke previously fixed stuff
- the roadmap - promises of dedicated servers and more
- (the slow start / progression barrier)