Unable to find games in Australia now

Yep, BF2042 in Oz is as dried up as a Dead Dingo's Donga.  So to speak.

Though Breakthrough has become completely barren, I did manage to get into a Conquest 128 game last night (Wednesday 16 Feb) around 8:15 pm.  Though I doubt this game was on Oz servers, possibly US.  Bots were plentiful though.  I know as I said in chat to take a point, and plenty said players are mostly AI.

The thing is that bots were meant to fill places to enable games when there were few human players.  That doesn't seem to be the case now.  Maybe the bots have left too??

BF1 is a bit better, and there are a few Oz servers that are chock a block at 64 with plenty waiting.  

BF5 seems to be the go to when after a few quick games, though the Oz servers also seem to have withered away.  Indonesia servers are plentiful and virile.  Man those Indonesians can be good...

The bots have all gone back to doing other things, one now works on minesweeper, another went off to a smart tv somewhere i heard.. i even think one of them was talking about starting up his own deep fake business or something. All the best to them.

MM doesn't help here.

I'm on Xbox One, Australia and last weekend kept joining new servers with less than half full of real players, then by end of game the server is full of real players then we all get split up and the next server is less than half full again.

Rinse, repeat. 

@Tank2042Man I'm in Perth, on xbox series x, and I'm busy with work until midnight so I can't game before then most of the time.

I've had trouble getting into games with crossplay on searching for 128 player conquest servers since mid December.

I've brought this up quite a few times, explained why match making is a terrible system for a game like Battlefield in smaller regions, how empty server creep would kill the game in regions where it took too long to start a match, and that this would begin spreading to regions with mid sized populations, and eventually the most populated regions.

Responses fell into two categories;

1. A lot of players experienced the same troubles I had.

2. A lot of "BF2042 CAN DO NO WRONG" fan boys claimed I was lying because their experience was they could get into servers quickly, never mind the fact they were living next to server farms in the most populated areas of Europe and North America. "I get less than 10ms - 20ms all the time and I have no problems."

The developers should see smaller regions as a microcosm for the Battlefield / gaming communities in general; If a game is quickly dying in a smaller region the problem will likely occur soon enough elsewhere.

@WTFxxPrYzMHaven't had a problem getting into AOW in the afternoon, but no chance of finding a game of Breakthrough (am in Sydney with Crossplay on))

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@Ga-Knomboe_Boy wrote:

@Tank2042Man I'm in Perth, on xbox series x, and I'm busy with work until midnight so I can't game before then most of the time.

I've had trouble getting into games with crossplay on searching for 128 player conquest servers since mid December.

I've brought this up quite a few times, explained why match making is a terrible system for a game like Battlefield in smaller regions, how empty server creep would kill the game in regions where it took too long to start a match, and that this would begin spreading to regions with mid sized populations, and eventually the most populated regions.

Responses fell into two categories;

1. A lot of players experienced the same troubles I had.

2. A lot of "BF2042 CAN DO NO WRONG" fan boys claimed I was lying because their experience was they could get into servers quickly, never mind the fact they were living next to server farms in the most populated areas of Europe and North America. "I get less than 10ms - 20ms all the time and I have no problems."

The developers should see smaller regions as a microcosm for the Battlefield / gaming communities in general; If a game is quickly dying in a smaller region the problem will likely occur soon enough elsewhere.

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Well on Xbox One I never had a problem on the weekends starting from about 8am all the way to late night.

Every server was full, no wait times, no half full servers.

Then about 2 weeks ago the half full servers started happening.

Maybe it started after the official announcement stating that the new content was being delayed until June AND the major patch was not coming until March. 

I can't speak for X series but on Xbox One / PS4 the game appeared to be well populated until fairly recently.

I have no reason to lie, just like I'm being honest about the apparent low numbers now.

I'll be interested to see what happens when the March patch comes out because last gen really needs some performance improvements.

@Tank2042Man Yep, the xbox one / ps4 population is healthier, and hasn't had the problems as bad until recently.

I had to switch to playing xbox one version because it was so hard to find games crossplay on series X.

In regards to player numbers in Australia / smaller regions; apart from announcements, game design choices and so forth affecting player numbers, I think a lot of it on next gen / PC has to do with the number of players needed to start for 128 player servers with match making.

For 64 players I think you only need 16 players to start the game (or maybe even less?). Whereas for 128 players, I think you need 32 players.

Now this shouldn't be an issue if there was a healthy player population.

However, if there are only a couple hundred players in a region or even less, and most of the players are already in an existing server, then there are simply not enough players to start a new game until another server closes and players are transferred, and the matchmaking system seems pretty stuffed in regards to transferring players to fill up existing lobbies that don't have enough players to start.

So if your on next gen in Aus, you may get lucky and get into a server, or you could be in for an infinite wait.

If there was a server browser for AoW it would solve most of these issues.

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@Ga-Knomboe_Boy wrote:

@Tank2042Man Yep, the xbox one / ps4 population is healthier, and hasn't had the problems as bad until recently.

I had to switch to playing xbox one version because it was so hard to find games crossplay on series X.

In regards to player numbers in Australia / smaller regions; apart from announcements, game design choices and so forth affecting player numbers, I think a lot of it on next gen / PC has to do with the number of players needed to start for 128 player servers with match making.

For 64 players I think you only need 16 players to start the game (or maybe even less?). Whereas for 128 players, I think you need 32 players.

Now this shouldn't be an issue if there was a healthy player population.

However, if there are only a couple hundred players in a region or even less, and most of the players are already in an existing server, then there are simply not enough players to start a new game until another server closes and players are transferred, and the matchmaking system seems pretty stuffed in regards to transferring players to fill up existing lobbies that don't have enough players to start.

So if your on next gen in Aus, you may get lucky and get into a server, or you could be in for an infinite wait.

If there was a server browser for AoW it would solve most of these issues.

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Yes a server browser definitely would help and it's something we have been pushing for on several threads like these :

.DICE help all players who cannot play / enjoy BF2042 due to MM - Answer HQ (ea.com)

DICE add a Server Browser / Persistent Servers to AOW - Answer HQ

Please add your weight to these threads daily and together we will try and get a solution asap.