Well I ended up refunding the game. This sucks so much for me. That was the last straw that broke the camel’s back: when I realized I’ve been using the same axe as a Zealot that I started with. Except now it’s green; and I wasn’t able to play with any of the super cool weapons I wanted (Thunder Warhammer, Eviscerator) except for the same list of axes/guns that I had no interest in using. That was 6 hours of playtime by the way. I was willing to suffer through the terrible performance if I could at least use the staple Eviscerator of 40k. Y’know, the f*cking iconic weapon of the setting. It’s ridiculous that you’re expected to suffer through hours and hours of tedium until you can finally get the weapon you want to use. I find this ludicrous. Give me something, anything, that will let me have fun, at the minimum.
Vermintide 2, at the very least, let you use any weapon you want from the start without any strings attached - granted those will be basic tiers but still, crafting allowed you to gradually upgrade weapons too, so progression didn’t feel bad. Why we regressed. I have no idea, but I sure as heck am not going to continue playing a game that doesn’t respect my time. It’s a complete flippant disregard towards me. I’m sure crafting or whatever is going to show up later, but no thanks, I’m not willing to wait for it. I’d rather get my money back now while I still can.
An unrelated thing too is how I couldn’t enjoy the melee systems that I’ve come to love in Vermintide. My Zealot gameplay in 3 bar difficulties consisted of me standing behind cover watching allies do shooty shoot while I too did boring shooty shoot. If I tried to play Zealot like you would in Vermintide 2, where you charge against a group, then unleash mayhem upon them. The freaking ranged enemies would shred you down. So unsatisfying. I couldn’t have fun. I couldn’t use the weapon I wanted.
Maybe there will be substantial changes 6 months down the line; but I’m not willing to wait that long when Vermintide 2 is awesome to play now and features the best game mode Fatshark has ever made (in my opinion): Chaos Wastes. Which is super fun to play on Cata with random people. Vermintide 2 also respects my time by allowing me to play with any weapon I want without any silly strings attached.
I’m just so exasperated at how bare-bones Darktide is to Vermintide. It sucks. I really, really, wanted to love Darktide, but I just can’t.