Helldivers 2 certainly involves strategy, but I wouldn't call the way I played it strategic; my first few hours in Arrowhead's hit shooter were chaotic, and not just because I went straight into automaton territory and shot up heavily armored robots with a peashooter. I was chopped up by melee combat robots, bumped into patriots' air strikes, tossed into the air at knot speeds, respawned too many times to count, and probably set back the cause of freedom for a few weeks. But hey, it was fun.

Now that I'm a little more familiar with the mechanics of Liberty 'Em Up (and have discovered the healthy joys of bug squashing), I've started unlocking the various loadout options: take an SMG or a shotgun. But some Helldivers are more thorough and don't have to go far to find tier lists, recommendations, spreadsheets, and warnings about so-called garbage builds on the Internet. Gamers prefer Minimax, and as the most popular game in town, the Helldiver Kit gets the full treatment.

The problem is that the information the game provides about weapons is somewhat incomplete. Each weapon has four visible stats (damage, capacity, recoil, and rate of fire) and certain characteristics. However, it turns out that there is much more going on under the hood.

"Regarding the weapon stats for Helldivers 2, Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt writes: "The weapon stats for Helldivers 2 are not the same as the weapon stats for the other weapons in the game. These numbers are a guide, but do not give a complete picture.

"Use whatever you like best."

Well. Some of the smarter helldivers have already figured out that the damage output of a particular weapon does not always match the numbers you see, but this is straight from the horse's mouth. There have also been complaints recently from players who feel they have been kicked out of groups for running suboptimal builds, so it's likely that the concept of meta poison is already wrapped around the lovely Lady Liberty. It's better than team-killing for resources that will be evenly distributed anyway, but it won't make much difference.

In a subsequent tweet, Pilestedt shared an image of an early version of the weapon information screen, which "had a second page showing the actual ammo status (since ammo is what defines most of a weapon's status)."

As someone who has been playing online matches for over 20 years, let me tell you, the meta concept sucks. It has always been the case, and taking it too seriously can ruin the fun of any game. I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting to optimize your build, loadout, or deck. I just think that when that trumps the minimalist max of running gear exactly as the spreadsheet tells you to, something about the game itself is lost.

In short, despite what the stat geeks and Pilestedt in Helldivers 2 say, I really like blasting bugs up close with a space shotgun (or whatever you want to call it). That feels good, and it's super satisfying to see the bugs disintegrate into chitinous goop. So, take the total status of all the guns in the game and bring it to 50 and tell me that that thing isn't worth it: I'm going to be running around out there with it anyway. Sure, it's for Liberty, but it's mainly for me.