I do not think there's actually a good way for a developer to avoid Play Services, which in turn leads me to say that you should continue to use it or whatever

I do not think there's actually a good way for a developer to avoid Play Services, which in turn leads me to say that you should continue to use it or whatever else lets you get the most functionality out of the Android for the least amount of pain. Objectively, an Android user is not going to disable the Play Services as Google's apps will continue to rely on it so non-Google developers should use it as well.