In SoT, Numbers do go up. You rank up, make money ( but...)
The way someone explained to me, You can separate basic progression systems in two main categories, vertical and horizontal. Vertical just means things get better, numbers go up and you become generally more powerful. Horizontal is that you get more options. An example of horizontal progression for SoT could hypothetically be that you needed to buy a blunderbuss or a sniper rifle. These are different weapons, but they are balanced not be overpowered and give the player a sense of personal customisation and progression.
This game simply has no horizontal progression, only vertical. You rank up to go on missions that are about doing the same thing more times as it poses higher difficulty. This to buy cosmetic only items that simply get progressively "fancier", but overall very much restricted.
There are plenty of good arguments to make against systems with numeric progression when comparing the two...But none excuse the current issues for this game. If anything it has the same problems than the worse version of a game that depends on it. Desperately trying to mask that you do the same thing over and over. Making difficulty be about just having to take more steps, get more stuff and or fight more enemies.
Something is missing from the skeleton of this whole idea. I only hope this was completely intentional. That is: releasing an incomplete game to find out what is missing via user feedback and then concentrating all efforts on solving it rather than waste time on features nobody wanted.
Wish this was a One Piece type story. I can't see how hour 5 will be much different than hour 105. Games like Borderlands, Destiny, COD or diablo have a lot of numbers going up etc but this game could have had at least some interesting NPC's or loot.
DrLove's comments