Helldivers 2 Players Establish ‘Unspoken’ Co-Op Etiquette

ign.com:

Helldivers 2 has only been out for a handful of days, but already its community is working to establish the “unspoken” rules of engagement, with an etiquette for good co-op play.

For the uninitiated, Helldivers 2 is a co-op focused shooter in which players team up to defeat giant alien bugs and terrifying automatons. It’s a dangerous game, and I don’t just mean just because of the bad guys. In Helldivers 2, you’re as much a danger to your teammates as the big bugs you face. With friendly fire very much a part of the gameplay, Helldivers 2 is a game in which you need to watch where you’re shooting - and where you're landing in a drop pod.

And so, across the Helldivers subreddit, Discord, and social media, players are setting down best practice for co-op play. There’s a great thread by redditor RhuanSqx in which the Helldivers 2 is essentially crowdsourcing this early-days rule list. There’s some obvious stuff in there, such as do not walk in the way of your teammate when they’re shooting and be careful where you place your strategems (that area of effect!). But there’s some less obvious stuff that’s really helpful for promoting positive play, too. For example, when someone calls in a resupply, share the ammo by only grabbing one cache. The more ammo everyone has, the merrier a time you’ll have. Oh, and reload your weapons before snagging that resupply.

Here’s a nice suggestion: don’t loot your teammates’ equipment without their permission, but feel free to loot their samples (extracted samples are shared equally at the end of a mission). In Helldivers 2, turrets are particularly useful, but they can also hit your teammates hard (friendly fire, remember!). Combat this by placing them on high ground, making the low ground as safe as possible.

Some of this etiquette is as much about avoiding griefing as it is promoting effective play. Helldivers 2, as I’ve said, is a dangerous game, and so it's as much about what you don't shoot as it is about what you do shoot. So, firing