Matchmaking Issues in Low-Population Regions
It is currently seemingly impossible to get into a conquest game in South Africa with more than 48 "players", many of whom are bots. Players are spread thin over many servers, even if they are playing the same modes. The Beta also didn't seem to have this issue at all. As it stands, there are 4 issues that need to be addressed to allow the game to be played as intended in low-pop regions:
- The time before bots fill the lobby needs to be increased, pehaps doubled or even trippled, allowing for more players to join. I'm sure most players would be more than happy to wait a few extra minutes to get a more well-rounded lobby with a better player-bot ratio.
- Lobbies seemingly cannot be merged, even though this would do a lot to mitigate the issue. This feature has been around since the early 2000s in CoD matchmaking.
- Allow players to enable queueing into full matchmade servers, ideally with the toggle visible in the matchmaking screen. This guarantees full servers.
- Persistent lobbies. I know EA is seemingly dead-set on ignoring any feedback when it comes to this, but it's legitimately part of the reason this game is dying in low-population regions. You don't need to wait for players at all if the whole server is carried over from one match to the next. Portal is NOT a solution to this problem, most people don't even touch portal.
