They renamed the options, so you can now choose to have explicit meta files or hidden meta files. They are necessary though, and always were, even when they were hidden in the Library folder - you can't just not have them at all.
They contain UUIDs which Unity uses to refer to your assets, including DLLs and scripts, and import settings which are vital for most non-script assets - anything you change in the inspector is stored in the meta for and needs to be committed to your VCS.
So their content must be shared throughout your team, and hiding them in a database in the Library folder is not going to work for you. You must convince your team members to commit their meta files at the right times. Some VCS systems will let you as hooks to warn on commits that may not include appropriate meta files.
It's not really clear from your question why you suspect problems with meta files though. It feels like a bit of a leap to suspect them.
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