Helldivers 2 Dev Says Players Kicking Teammates Who Don’t Have ‘Meta’ Loadouts Is a ‘Hard to Solve’ Problem, Asks Community for Ideas

ign.com:

Helldivers 2 is an early 2024 smash hit, with critical and commercial acclaim following its explosive launch on PlayStation 5 and PC. But there are some aspects of the co-op shooter that can result in a frustrating experience, and one of them has to do with the behavior of your teammates.

As IGN reported last month, some Helldivers 2 players are kicking their teammates before games even get going because they’re not bringing so-called "meta" builds to the party. (Check out IGN’s best loadouts guide to see what we think). This has been a problem with Helldivers 2 ever since it came out, particularly on higher difficulties, so nothing new there. But now the boss of developer Arrowhead has taken notice publicly, and asked the game’s community for ideas on how to solve what he called a tricky problem.

CEO Johan Pilestedt tweeted a response to one user who said they’d been “removed”, aka kicked, from matches due to using a single Stratagem or weapon the host didn’t like. “This is so shitty,” Pilestedt said. “Also very hard to solve — we have some ideas but no conclusion. You know what, let's try this: Hive Mind — do you have a design suggestion for how to improve this experience?”

This is so shitty. Also very hard to solve - we have some ideas but no conclusion.

You know what, let's try this: Hive Mind - do you have a design suggestion for how to improve this experience? https://t.co/HgUlV80fP4

What followed was a steady stream of suggestions. One user tweeted to suggest the addition of a 'kick reason', which might prompt an explanation. In this case, the user believes they were kicked because they picked up samples dropped by their squadmate, who, they suspect, did not know samples are shared at the end of a successful mission completion.

Another suggestion is that Helldivers 2 highlights the player who just kicked you in the ‘recent teammates’ section, so you can block them and, hopefully, prevent squadding up with them in the future.

Streamer Gothalion suggested the addition