Helldivers 2 players are pushing back against 'meta' builds because they just want to have fun

Some Helldivers 2 players are seemingly urging others to play the game with a 'competitive' nature, and a lot of players aren't having it.

If you didn't already know, 'meta' is a phrase ascribed to something that's popular in an online competitive game. This might be a particular character paired with a particular weapon, for example, like how the R-99 submachine gun was absolutely dominant in the early days of Apex Legends, and therefore deemed the 'meta' amongst competitive players.

It seems some Helldivers 2 players are trying to figure out the game's meta, much to the derision of others. The subreddit post just below, for example, is critical of players calling out their teammates weapons. The 'Breaker Shotgun' is deemed to be one of the more powerful weapons in the game right now, but the post below argues that not everyone has to use it, just because it's popular.

"No one wants to play with the sweat screaming commands into their mic like they're on the front lines of 'nam in a life or death situation," the player writes. But, they add, this situation actually flips on the higher difficulties, where teamwork is required for a successful mission - if you're just fooling around with a weak weapon, then it's logical that your teammates would be slightly annoyed.

Similarly, the post below argues that streamers are damaging the team-based nature of Helldivers 2 by trying to create builds that are viable for solo play. Helldivers 2 is a game that's meant to be played as a squad, not on your own, and so YouTubers or streamers that are trying to urge others into playing solo are sort of missing the point of the co-op shooter.

A commenter even claims that they got "kicked" from a match for stealing 'Samples' from their squad mates. Samples are universally shared across an entire team, so if one person bags a Rare Sample, it's shared among all players, but apparently some people haven't worked this out yet, and are kicking their allies out of games for what they deem to