Matchmaking creates unnecessary new lobbies instead of filling existing lobbies
I’ve observed this issue for months, and finally decided to write it up in a detailed calm way, JUST IN CASE devs don’t fully understand the scope of the problem.
I’ve gathered opinions from several Multiplayer mains, and this issue is universal across all game modes, but is the most prominent and easily replicable in Battle Royale.
My region: NA West
Battlefield 6 matchmaking appears to be creating multiple partially filled lobbies in the same region instead of prioritizing existing lobbies that are still below the minimum player count required to start.
This is especially easy to reproduce late at night when the regional player population is lower.
With the network graph enabled, you can see the Session ID and ping for each lobby at the top. For example:
- Join a lobby showing 25/80 players required (100 max). It sits there and struggles to gain players.
- Leave and immediately re-queue.
- After 1 to 5 repetitions, you will be placed into a different Session ID, at the same ping, but this lobby has 45/80 players.
That means there are roughly 70 players split between two separate lobbies in the same region, while neither lobby can start. Those players could instead form one active lobby.
An even clearer example happens after finishing a match. From the end-of-round screen, press A to matchmake again. Sometimes the game puts you into a newly created lobby with only <10/80 players, where it sits waiting. If you quit to the main menu and immediately re-queue, you can then be placed into another lobby in the same region with something like 60/80 players.
Why were those <10 players placed into a nearly empty new lobby instead of being sent to the existing 60-player lobby?
This suggests the matchmaking system is not sufficiently prioritizing filling existing viable lobbies before creating additional ones. During low-population hours, this fragments the available player pool across several sessions and can prevent matches from starting even when enough players are online.
This should be reproducible using the network graph to compare Session IDs, ping, and player counts during lower-population hours.
