hmott
Yes, Firebase is good at real-time sync, parse is good at query data.
In my one test, I combined them to create a message board,
- using firebase to broadcast "new post",
- if user wants to read some older posts, using parse to display older posts by some conditions.
Official MP is another kind of multi-player plugin, it has lower response latency to be more real-time than firebase.
Since parse could not sync data, only firebase and official MP need to be compared.
Here is an example to show the different between firebase and official MP: firebase could send message to each user, or broadcast to some/all of users in real-time, but official MP could not (unless put all users in a room)
Another case, if there are 50 users in a room, they are all connect to a host using officail MP plugin.
1. all data will be broadcast through the host (user), and
2. room will be destroyed if the host (user) had left,
Firebase had different behaviors in these two points.
1. all users connect to firebase server, not one of user. So the scaling of using firebase is better then official MP in this case.
2. users could stay in the room in firebase server, even host user had left.... wait, there is no "host user" in this case. So the behavior of firebase will be more suitable for a mmo-like game.
To solve these problem in offical MP plugin, designer could make a big, always running host for all players. In this solution, the hardware cost might not be ignored since the big host needs put on a dedicated server. And any user will receive status of all other users, it will become another problem.