The other day I wanted to play co-op but no one was on the server so I looked on the photon website and was shocked:
A maximum ccu of 3 means that if you want to play co-op, you need to sync with your friends via steam chat. This means that the auto discovery and other complicated lobby features are no longer useful and co-op in general is beyond marginal.
Co-op code doubles my dev time and it is so intertwined with the gameplay code that it depletes my sanity so I keep breaking it.
Here is an example with net code:
Now without net code:
Read more here https://elefantopiainc.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-trap-of-multiplayer.html
This + marginal use = it makes no sense to keep the net code so I took it out of the main dev branch.
I Zima Blued McDROID.
As I pulled the code out it was heart breaking because I realized how much effort went into it, there were truly clever bits to make your experience seamless. After a while of working on the now-lean code I have no regret. It is SO MUCH easier and now I can focus on gameplay, fixing long standing bugs, it feels good.
I'll soon post the result of tons of alterations on a new engine and you'll see how much better everything runs.
What I can do for those who love co-op is keep the servers up until another project needs it and keep the co-op build in the co-op branch so if you want to play with your friends you all can switch here.
In the comments, @lukz brought up a good point and after trying to defend my logic I realized that he was right : this is missing a data point. So I tried to find the answer with this graph:
My interpretation, (apart from the elephant in the room) is:
Very rarely is co-op being played and ...
... I think that this spike of activity on Sunday were friends synching before playing co-op.
So this confirms the conclusion: servers are so dead that players have to sync together to enjoy that and so having co-op build on a separate branch is acceptable compromise given how hard dealing with the net code is.
@lukz got me thinking: could there have been a way to revive multiplayer? Forcing it on everyone was something we explicitly avoided during development because we presumed that it would alienate players to have some jerk connect to their game and sell all your turrets in the middle of a zergrush.
But this is only a presumption, yet it was sealed in stone like the holy commandments!
The probability of this happening is high but MP on Steam is friend-filtered so it would be only your friends who can be jerks, which is always good fun.
I removed the co-op button and now PLAY is CO-OP, in the co-op & public beta branch