Git Gud and Helldivers

In my august and well researched opinion this is a mismatch between what players expect and what the game actually is. The railgun is viewed as essential because of a missapprehension that every player should be able to do anything by themselves. People fixated on the failgun railgun to the point where they become dismissive of the idea that anything else is viable.

In truth there are many strats and weapons that can do what the railgun does, often better if you can tolerate specialization. The MG-43 will still be shredding medium enemies long after you run out of railgun rounds. The EAT17 is an all purpose problem solver. There are a wide range of air strikes and orbitals that cover most cases.

The only stand-out thing the railgun has is that it can do everything, alone. It's not a teamwork or coop weapon. It doesn't specialize, or require coordination of loadouts across your team. People can play by themselves, to an extent, without support from the team, and without supporting the team.

And what does that get you? A player base that doesn't know how to manage chargers and titans. Players run up against the limits of the failgun - slow rof, limited ammo, the whole "explodes in your face" thing, and it's bugged damage (if the host is on ps5 it's damage becomes massively higher for clients) and think something must be wrong. They will not, say, try running two eat17s, an ac, and an mg43 because they "know" all those strats aren't worth taking. They "know" everything else is useless because they're not coordinating with teammates to use anti-armor or horde clear strats as appropriate. As an individual they don't have enough firepower. As a team of four with a balance of weapons and strats you can kill the whole world.

Likewise, the breaker. It does everything and doesn't require much practice or effort. So of course the other weapons are trash, right?

Well, the breaker, like the railgun, is overtuned, and player's expectations of what guns should do and what they're for is out of whack with the game. Any primary in the game can deal with basic bugs and troops - that is to say, roughly human sized enemies. The primary weapons, excepting the spray and pray, are quite good at dealing with small, human sized enemies.

They begin to run in to problems when people believe that their standard assault rifle should be able to effortlessly blow away 650kg armored alien death beasts and 3m tall armored combat robots. An assault rifle or smg isn't appropriate for them. You need something bigger. The amr, gl, mg-43, jar, and a wide variety of strats cover this terrain. But they're not the railgun, so they're useless, so the enemies are too strong.

And then you go up a level to armoed enemies. For reasons i cannot fathom people think a 12.7mm or 20mm gun should pen main battle tank armor. They seem to think this ought to be another game where enemies are big piles of hitpoint that you can shoot with anything. The idea that armored enemies require anti-armor weapons seems to offend many people. And since they "know", with zealous fanaticism, that the railgun is the only good weapon, and it's not very good at dealing with armor at high levels, everything must be broken!

There's no willingness to examine their assumptions or evaluate any of the game's weapons and strategems on their merits. The breaker and railgun are wildly overtuned (and i suspect the railgun is suffering from several different bugs that make it much more effective against heavy armor than intended), but that's the meta and meta is god so everything else needs to be brought up to that level so all the meta players can win as easily and effortlessly as they believe they deserve. Anyone who claims that other weapons are not only viable but quite strong, and that over-reliance on the meta leaves players lacking the skills and balanced loadouts they need to suceed at high levels, is angrily chased away with insults and scorn.

I don't run the railgun or the breaker or the shield pack or the orbital railstrike or the orbital lasers. I don't like the limitations of the railgun and breaker. The railstrike and orbital laser have cooldowns far too long for what you get. The shield isn't worth giving up an attack strat for what you get.

The lib pen gives you accurate and precise medium armor pen at a distance, making it suitable for covering teammates, sniping light enemies, or mag-dumping in to berserkers. The jar shreds medium enemies. The lib explosive has massive stun and knockback and deals full damage to "weak points". The punisher and slugger both have brutal damage potential and the slugger has good armor pen. The defender smg is a powerful closer range damage dealer. The drm is very reliable at taking down light and medium bots if you can click heads.

There are a lot of very capable and effective options, but people have to set down their unwarranted conviction that the meta represents what the game " should" be, rather than bugged and overtuned stand outs.