[2021] HowTo: Play co-op with your Friends

I'm writing down the info here because the current multiplayer system is a bit broken and requires a bit of faith together with luck in order to work, which makes a lot of players accidently think it doesn't work at all....

So let's begin:

1. Make sure all you friends appears online in the Epic Launcher
2. connect on discord\teams\whatever so you can troubleshoot issues
3. Load the game
4. Click play at the main menu and wait until you are all loaded into the city - you do not need to see each other. just be in the city
5. The player with the most stable and fast connection should be the host
6. Click "P" to load the party window and make sure all your friends appear there as "online".
7. Double click each on each friend (click the checkbox or the name) - you WILL NOT see any indication that an invitation was sent - you will need to confirm with the specific friend that they got an invitation and accepted it.
8. After they accept an invitation they should appear in your team (their character details and name will appear on the left side of the screen).
9. If one of the friends didn't got the invitation OR accepted it and didn't join your party he will need to reload the game.
10. If none of the friends accepted an invitation, the "host" will need to reload the game.
11. Once all of you in the party you can go ahead and start a job\heist\whatever

Troubleshooting per experience:

1. If at any point the game stuck in the "ready" screen after you finish a mission\job for more than 60sec, Alt-F4 and reload (some of you will be able to exit the game if they are thrown to the main menu)
2. When a friend couldn't accept an invite - it never worked to just exit to main menu. We never succeeded to enter the party without reloading the game
3. Do not try to accept the invite from the "friends menu" in the Epic Launcher (shift F3...) - it does weird things, and you will all end up reloading the game
4. If you are less than 4 players in the party and want to prevent a random matchmaking into the team, be ready to click "F" as soon as the matchmaking screen is loaded and it will shorten the waiting time to 2sec and load you into the game

We managed to play together (team of 3-4) pretty consistently once we joint the host, so that the current hurdle to pass.

How it helps someone, and the game is so so so much better in multiplayer

Cheers