XP boosts shouldn’t tick down while you’re waiting for a match to start
I activated an XP boost and was connected to a match straight away. However, the lobby wasn’t full, so the match hadn’t actually started yet. I spent four minutes waiting for players to join before realizing my XP boost was being wasted.
The matchmaking problems currently affecting BF6 are something I’d like to complain about in a separate post. Right now, my issue is more specific: I don’t understand why the XP boost timer counts down in situations where I can’t possibly earn any XP. Specifically:
- Before I’ve joined a match. If I activate a boost while I’m in menus or searching for a game, the clock is already running even though I’m not playing.
- After I’ve joined a match that hasn’t started. If the lobby is waiting on more players, I’m sitting idle while the boost burns down.
It’s not game-breaking, but it feels unfair. Imagine you join a half-empty lobby and spend ten minutes waiting for it to fill. Your boost keeps running out the whole time, and you haven’t earned a single point of XP. That’s a chunk of a paid or earned item gone for nothing. And since matchmaking is already inconsistent right now, this makes the problem worse: the more the lobbies struggle to fill, the more boost time players lose through no fault of their own.
I don’t know whether you can activate XP boosts while already in a match. If you can, I apologize for the rant, and it’s simply a case of activating at the wrong time. But if you can’t, then surely this is a design flaw?
A possible fix: the boost timer should only count down during active gameplay, or at the very least pause while a player is in menus, in matchmaking, or in a lobby waiting for the match to start. That would make the boost work as players expect, and it would protect them from losing value during matchmaking hiccups.
EA_Shepard
