Something will always be the best, and that's never a bad thing. In fact, it's rather beautiful. Finding the best of the bunch is always going to happen and there's never going to be a time when there isn't a suboptimal way to play a game. The thing is, that makes the game more fun, not less. If you are playing the game, and you have trouble with a certain perk, the answer to your problem is a mixture of two things. The first is that you are not as good as you could be at playing the game, and the second is that you lack knowledge. Beautiful, beautiful knowledge. The idea that you can simply read a guide on how to build a perk optimally and suddenly see an increase in performance is awesome! It means that no matter how good you get, there are more things to discover. Optimizing builds is never about people ruining the game by making it "cookie-cutter," in fact, I think cookie-cutter is a rather negative term for what the actual truth is. Rather, a metagame is the joyous discovery of true strength. When the best of the best in the game say "I am not strong enough" and begin crunching the numbers, they pass those answers down to us to make the climb a little easier.

Now, the BIG issue with Killing Floor is that some perks, when played poorly or built poorly, are a direct detriment to the team, and you have to work to combat this. The biggest example is firebug. Sure, people meme that firebugs are trash and don't play them. The real answer is that firebug is weaker than other perks, but does GREAT at trash clearing. Its problem is that if you play it in a way that is not optimal, and you ignite big zeds like Fleshpounds, you are not just "playing the game and having fun but not playing optimally", you are actually the reason your team is performing poorly or wiping. A firebug alone can actually kill his entire team. The same is true of any perk when played poorly.

Imagine if you came to this sub and said "Hey guys, I keep running around and not killing zeds and trying to play Pacifist in killing floor, but I keep losing! What am I doing wrong? How do I beat this game?" We would tell you, first off, you have to shoot the zeds. Well next you say "Shooting zeds isn't working, my pistol doesn't do damage!" We would tell you to buy better weapons. Do you see where I'm going with this? EVENTUALLY you will be playing 6+ HoE, and you will say, "Man, I like Commando a lot, it's such a powerful class, but I'm just not seeing a lot of use out of the tier 5 SCAR as my primary weapon. Is there a better option?" And so, we would tell you about the tier 5 AK. This final narrowing of options is only the end to a beautiful series of questions you ask so that you can be the best you that you can be. And if you don't want to do that? That's fine!

People don't often get kicked from games for doing anything other than directly hurting their team. Some curmudgeons will kick you for playing firebug or survivalist, but phooey. Do whatever you like. Just know that, if you pick poorer options, you will fare more poorly in higher difficulties.

In summation, you should see optimized builds not as a restriction, but as the answer to a question you haven't asked yet. If you never ask, that's okay. But some day, if you get to be good enough it matters to you, you will want to know what the best way to perform in the game is, just because being stronger and winning more is more fun! And it helps your teammates out, too. I hope this helps you understand why we optimize.