The fundamental point missing in this conversation is cloud computing. No, I don't mean something like the Nvidia Geforce Now, Google Stadia, or Xbox Cloud Gaming. And this is why I think EA will not allow private rental servers like they did in BF3/4 days.
In BF1, 5, and now 2042, if you attempt to join a game through matchmaking, and after some time, you are pulled into an empty server. That server was spun up on a cloud server that isn't hosted by anyone other than a virtual server on a cluster somewhere in your region and then began seeding to other would-be players looking for a game through matchmaking. I assume Portal works the same way but you are able to manage some of the game play options available. I've only briefly tested creating servers in BF5 and you basically use a template and make some gameplay changes before you start. You can save this template and re-create a game server with the same settings over and over again but will still be hosted by EA on their servers, never a private server. Server persistence depends on the last player who, upon leaving, "turns the lights off on their way out", shutting down the server.
The tick rate is still kind of a mystery for me. While I think the tick rate has a set maximum rate, I wonder if this is set depending on which client starts/creates the server. Are console servers always a lower tick rate vs. pcs? If so, that would imply that console servers are unable to tolerate anything higher than that without robbing the much needed overhead and resources of the console that created the server. I recall the days in other multiplayer games, if the person that created the game, left the game, server migration would need to happen before the game could resume. That's client side servers.
Let's talk about Virtual Machines (VM). So you jump into BF2042 and hit that beautiful PLAY button. You matchmake for a bit and then start a game and sit at the Looking for Players screen for a bit. You jump into the server only to see bots... bots everywhere. Congrats, you just atomically created a virtual server hosting a BF2042 multiplayer game. The same happens when you play solo or co-op. Unless EA is using an Elastic cloud infrastructure, the cpu cycles will always be limited by the virtual machine (VM) creation parameters as not to steal cycles and resources from other VMs hosting other BF game servers or even unrelated services on the same server cluster. No, you do not create a game on your pc or console, you ask EA to spin up a VM to host a virtual game server that only you or the people you allow to join. Even these solo or co-op games can suffer from network latency, packet loss, and disconnects/interruptions. I imagine that these solo/co-op games are also limited in tick rate as the VM parameters would be the same.
Why did they do this, not sure but I feel it has more to do with a business model of pushing a title out as fast as possible and then patch/fix until the next iteration is ready to go. Gotta get that up-front prepurchase buy. Also, cloud computing and the several different types of cloud infrastructure can be very expensive. Being cheap and "robbing" players for max profit's isn't going to be the case. Didn't they say that the BF franchise was around 10% of their portfolio? Yeah, it's not a money maker, especially now. Look no further than Apex Legends as their cash cow and that game runs and is supported well. What tick rate are the Apex servers running at?