How is the co-op online experience (with friends)?

[-ETU-Daedalus]

Thinking about getting this game. Had ultra fun with SWAT4 back in the day and would love to play co-op with a friend or two (NOT with randoms). Don't need PvP; Cool missions/objectives and good level design against AI is enough.

Can anyone share their experiences regarding this? Thank you!

[𝒞𝒶𝓈𝓊𝒶𝓁 Sinner]

Pretty fun when I played COOP, I've taken a break and mainly play solo just because I like the control of the SWAT AI and commands. As Kevin mentioned, if you have a very good lobby, you'll have very good games. If you have a bad team though, well. Lets just say that difficulty varies map to map and mode to mode, as well as the RNG between individual rounds. So the easier maps, you may find no issue, the harder maps, you may see the gaps in your team a lot clearer

[-ETU-Daedalus]

Thank you so far! I plan on playing with good real life friends; I usually don't play with randoms/strangers. So having a reliable team (as I know for a fact from other PvE/PvP games) with my friends is granted in this case.

[Honnes G.]

If you don't play with friends, what usually happens is
1. Joining a lobby with bad connection/losing connection to host.
2. Joining a lobby where one or more people are afk and so the round never starts.
3. Joining a lobby where everyone is standing around in the station doing their own thing.
4. Joining a lobby using mods you may/may not have including maps in which case you'll just fail to connect upon match start.
5. Join the same lobby you tried to avoid seconds before for any of the above reasons, because there is no server browser.

If you do manage to get into an actual game, what tends to happen is
1. Everyone races off and does their own thing, either because they're stupid or because they've just played the game countless times now and are jaded.
2. No one/not enough people is/are using a mic or communicating.
3. Someone is team-killing.
4. Someone dies and leaves the lobby.
5. Someone trips the door traps.
6. Someone kills the civilians/detonates suicide bombs.
7. No one cuffs or collects.

If you join a lobby and it's full of people who are communicating, understanding, and are all on the same page regarding how they want to play the map (semi-tactical, full-tactical, casual, etc.) then and only then will you not have a terrible experience.

So basically for COOP you
1. Play with friends/groupies from the Discord
2. Get exceptionally lucky