By advertised I mean pretty much all the officially released promotional material and dev blogs, along with devs being interviewed in articles or youtube videos, Twitch vods, etc.
Everything I picked up in terms of advertisement was taken with a bunch of skepticism (I started playing VT2 during it’s pre-release beta) but despite that I still had enough faith in FS to not refund the game on the day before the official release. I was really on the fence about it, and in retrospect I definitely made the wrong choice. What sticks out the most is probably a quote from this post. It’s on the topic of crafting and was made just a few days before official release.
The “re-worked” crafting system that was delivered in the last major patch is, to be fair, quite similar to what they describe in that post, but they hadn’t really given any details about the RNG fine print and it’s definitely contrary to the bold part of the quote.
In VT2 I got 1 or 2 reds per weapon type, re-rolled the properties and traits to make them suit my playstyle(s), re-rolled a whole bunch of trinkets and accessories and then I avoided interacting with the crafting system until a new weapon was released.
In DT you really have to interact with the crafting system since the gear is an imperative part in trying different playstyles (which standalone is a good thing). With it’s current system I see RNG and I see an inventory management game and that’s what’s stopping me from launching DT even if I know I enjoy the core gameplay. I don’t see any trace of player impact or player agency and I don’t see how I can select my preferred playstyle.