How co-op actually works in Returnal - an updated version

[wasteland_ghost]

(Note: February 9th update did NOT fix the co-op crashing issues! Just got two in a row with vanilla game with the same symptoms - joining, using fabricator.)

An updated version of the first one which was posted earlier: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1649240/discussions/0/3772364735639966195/

The Steam page description is vague and hides several very important points about co-op: Returnal is NOT a true co-op where you can progress together and play together through the whole campaign, it’s a multiplayer game where you can summon another player to help you once per session, it’s primarily a post-game addition aimed at experienced players who finished the game helping the new players to overcome difficulties.

But even with this limitation the game itself is still a good one and co-op is enjoyable if you have a clear understanding of how it works and which bugs you can encounter - and there are a lot of those with many being gamebreaking and run-ending.

An important thing to keep in mind: the game is actually harder in co-op, by deciding to play together you’re choosing the hard mode and it’s made even harder by all the bugs and crashes. Resources are not duplicated and if you’re not careful you will be collecting twice less obolites. And having two people shooting doesn’t mean much when enemies have more health and deal more damage (up to x2 for both damage and health for some bosses). On top of that, you will need to do everything twice for both of you to be able to finish the game.

How the co-op actually works:

1. After a short tutorial you gain access to a Chronosis device - a white sphere through which you can create a private session for a friend to join.

2. You can do it only once! After you have used the sphere, it becomes locked until you die and start a new cycle! (or until you progress to the next biome that has a new intact sphere you can use)

3. If any of you has an urgent matter to deal with in real life and needs to quit the game - you won’t be able to rejoin, the sphere will still be red and saying ALREADY USED!

4. If any of you disconnects due to network trouble - you won’t be able to rejoin, the sphere will still be red!

5. If any of you crashes - you won’t be able to rejoin, the sphere will still be red! And right now the game crashes a lot: unexpectedly, unreliably, sometimes after 5 mins in and sometimes after an hour when you’re fully geared up and ready to go for a bossfight.

6. The joining player comes with nothing, but default items no matter the progress on his/her own cycle - could have been ok, if not for points 1-5 above, because if you crash and manage to reconnect (using the sphere in the next biome), the client will lose all the progress in the host’s cycle anyway.

7. The cycle and story progress are for the host only - could have been ok, if not for points 1-5 above. It is possible for the client to at least progress his/her weapon unlocks, but the devs expect you to somehow guess that you need to reroll to make sure the weapon is generated for you - otherwise the progress bar won’t grow and you will have no idea why.

8. If you die together, you restart together and the whole world, including Chronosis devices, will reset.

9. The house sequences the Steam description mentions as inaccessible in co-op are crucial story pieces that give you access to very important items. So at some point you will have to go out of co-op and play separately through those.

All of this is never explained clearly before you buy the game. And after you buy it, you can easily spend more than two hours before realizing you won’t be able to play it in a proper cooperative way, so you won’t be able to refund it.

Note: in the very first biome if the host choses to exit co-op through the main menu, the Chronosis device actually resets and becomes white and usable again. Observed at the very start of the session while both players were still at the ship’s location. Did not work when we tried it in the third biome - the sphere stayed red and unusable. There is a mod on Nexus that tries to make the sphere reusable, but from our experience it doesn’t actually work.

After playing the game almost exclusively in co-op for quite a long time here’s a list of bugs we encountered:

1. Crashes: the game crashes a lot and being in co-op seems to increase the probability. Using fabricators and teleporters has a high chance to crash either the host or the client - we were crashing mostly on those. We were finally able to play without crashing thanks to this mod by R457:
https://www.nexusmods.com/returnal/mods/37

2. Network issues: both the host and the client can suddenly lose the ability to deal damage to enemies, items position on the ground quite often becomes desynced - the host and the client see the same item at different locations. Sometimes items are visible to the host only and not visible for the client. Sometimes enemies can be visible for the client only (sometimes inactive, sometimes invulnerable).

3. Physics problems: the client can have reduced gravity, can start sliding suddenly, can be pushed over platform ledges after teleporting.

4. Map glitches: both the client and the host can lose teleporters on both minimap and the map making it close to impossible to fast travel. Same can happen with other icons: chests, heals, anything can suddenly disappear from the map.

5. Minimap glitch: the client can lose his/her minimap permanently after visiting some of the secret rooms hidden behind trap floors - 100% reproducible with a crab enemy in Crimson Desert biome. Dropping to another secret room seems to fix the issue. (This is a bug and it’s not related to the minimap scrambling malfunction!)

6. Story issues: Selene’s story dialogs while examining story related objects like murals quite often fail to play for the client.

7. Teleporting problems: teleporter spheres can become completely invisible for the client. Some of the smaller teleporters you can activate separately are too far away and outside of the tether radius (especially vertical ones), which results in a series of double-teleporting because of tethering if the client is the first to use it. Teleporter spheres you need to activate jointly can produce a nasty bug when the first player is transformed into a sphere of light and teleported but the second one is not, resulting in the first player being permanently stuck in that sphere of light form (first person, distorted camera). Teleporting, tethering, dying and reviving do not fix the issue, the bugged player is forced to disconnect and it means losing all the co-op progress for the client.

8. In Crimson Desert a red dust vignette indicating out of bounds player position can appear while being perfectly inside the bounds. Sometimes it leads to inability to travel back to some parts of the map - you are stopped and thrown back as you were indeed reaching the playable area borders, though in fact you’re in the middle of a room. We suspect it’s related to teleporters not properly synching player coordinates, especially in co-op.

9. The bug with the third boss and the infinite falling. We did not encounter it ourselves, but we came prepared: the client was staying on the very edge of the tether radius, the host was activating and immediately skipping both cutscenes.

Those issues are HUGE for a type of game Returnal is. Just an example: we crashed three times in a row just before the first boss while trying to craft ourselves some support items with a fabricator, we died to a story mini-boss in biome 2 after encountering zero damage bug, we crashed several times in biome 2 because of teleporters and had to redo from scratch, we had bug 5 (minimap glitch) happening consistently in biome 2 leaving the client essentially blind, we fought the second boss after encountering bugs 7 and 8 with the client being reset after reconnecting and the host having a red vignette all over the screen and constant wind and Selene’s heavy breath sound, physics and desync glitches we had every session up to the point they became part of the gameplay - the list can go on and on and we feel like the further we progress the more unstable the game becomes. For a game that punishes mistakes with a full run reset being out of control and losing runs because of bugs is unacceptable. Those MUST be fixed and now - not years later (if ever)!

PS This list of bugs was sent to [e-mail] - a company that is responsible for the PC port of Returnal. We would gladly send it to Sony, but they are very efficient at hiding their direct contacts and sending the customers through an infinite loop of standard “update your drivers” articles and “ask our community” advice instead. We did send it to Housemark earlier via their support page and got a generic “we’re sorry you’re having troubles, we will try to investigate” answer (and we just redid the report to say their new patch was fixing nothing). Nonetheless, we encourage other players to also write messages to support - otherwise they won’t be convinced that the problem actually exists and won’t do anything about it. It is NOT an attack on the game - we do like it, it’s a good one. It’s an attempt to force the devs/publishers to take responsibility and resolve the problems their paying customers have.

[Rastlaff]

Long text ...

going straight to the point to me :
https://www.nexusmods.com/returnal/mods/37

Such a shame because actually the game is a real good one. Very good "Prometheus" (the movie) like atmosphere (devs are prob fans of Alien movies) and also very good new approach to that overly exploited SOULS-like genre.

It's a superb challenge and I still recommend it over other SOULS ones by Steam... I smell the same SOULS song from the upcoming "Bleak Faith: Forsaken".

[ℕ𝕦𝕜𝕒ℂ𝕠𝕝𝕒V2]

Thanx you very much for reporting this detailed report to the devs … Maybe we need another Year to get it without all the fatal errors / game crashes …
All other Sony Games on Steam was so great but then a game what I rlly bought on day 1 for a friend and me… just this ♥♥♥♥ happened

[p0k314NET]

Multiplayer is one big mess. And what's funny, they use Epic EOS on which tens of thousands of people are playing, without any problem, at the same time (Fortnite). I make no secret of the fact that it looks weak. IMHO for now it is completely pointless to play online, what mean this is pointless to play at all, because this game is 99% coop gameplay.

[El Goretto]

Thank you My Good Sir!
Detailling how coop works in this game was really helpful, I was right to be suspicious.
Coop was the main reason I was looking at it (and I won't anymore, too bad).

[wasteland_ghost]

We're in biome 5 now and we encountered a new game breaking bug: when teleporting out of a secret room you can find yourself out of bounds. Tried to die - no, still placed out of bounds. Ended up with both of us permanently falling down into the void and after the client quit host's save made in biome 5 didn't work - was respawned with a fresh cycle. 3 hours of playtime lost and need to grind back for ether.

24 hour peak is around 900 players and going down each day. If those bugs are fixed, people will go back for co-op because the game is good, just in a frustratingly bad technical condition.