I hope we can agree that Darktide, in today’s reality, is NOT a game where you buy progress/power. I’d love to see a link on the booster system you’ve mentioned, as I don’t recall anything like that.
I have, however, seen the post from Hedge right after launch saying this:
We haven’t any plans, short or long term, to monetize power. Future careers are still on the cards but they wont be inherently more powerful by design, barring initial balance issues when they go from internal testing to the wider community.
Others are free to continue to claim that FS is awful and predatory and liars, but I don’t see them that way. And neither does Onarm in his epic, oft-reposted comment about Fatshark’s actual issues:
The thing that makes it hurt the worst is Fatshark isn’t assholes about any of this. They obviously care. They obviously listen. They obviously want their games to be great. They put tons and tons of effort into their games…
I don’t see greed in the many free maps for VT2 and now DT, nor in Chaos Wastes nor in the talent trees rework nor in any other way. They set a (imo high) price for purely-visual cosmetics, and people determine if those are worth the cost.
The crafting system, with all its imperfections, appears to me to be an attempt at providing progression-motivated (vs. skill/mastery-motivated) players with more play time alongside the universally-lauded gameplay. I think it is effective in this regard, although far too harsh. It may be off the mark, but without the ability to purchase loot boxes or ordo dockets, I just can’t get behind the idea that it is predatory or anything like a game where you spend real money to buy power/progression.