REDSEC OCE – We Need a Sustainable Path Forward

The REDSEC OCE community is struggling with the recent changes to playlists, from the addition to casuals and the recent removal of Normals.

I want to make it clear that this isn't about attacking EA or the developers. There are a lot of people in OCE who genuinely love this game and want to see it succeed. The community has invested a huge amount of time into building Discord communities, running tournaments, organising scrims and trying to keep players engaged.

But right now, the situation is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

The problem for OCE

For OCE players, the only genuine multiplayer option without playing against significant numbers of bots is now effectively on high-ping servers.

That creates a difficult situation for the community. Players who want to play casually are pushed towards an experience that doesn't necessarily provide the multiplayer experience they are looking for, while players who want to progress into competitive play are forced onto higher-ping servers.

I understand EA's position that Casuals was intended to be an on boarding pathway into Battle Royale.

However, I would argue that BR Initiation was already the on boarding pathway.

Players could jump in with friends, learn the game, understand the mechanics and gradually become more comfortable with Battle Royale. Once they had that experience, they could choose to progress into more competitive play.

What we have now is an on boarding pathway that can ultimately lead players towards a poor, high-ping multiplayer experience once they want to move beyond it.

Casuals has had an unintended consequence

From what we have seen in OCE, the introduction of Casuals has unfortunately caused more harm than good for the ongoing health of the community.

OCE has a much smaller player population than North America or Europe. Splitting that population across multiple playlists has a dramatically different effect here.

Before Casuals, Quads was consistently playable throughout much more of the day. As the playlists have been divided, the available population for genuine BR matches has become increasingly difficult to sustain.

This isn't simply about wanting one particular playlist.

It's about population management in a smaller region.

When you divide a small player base across too many queues, you can end up with several playlists that technically exist but none of them have enough real players to provide a healthy experience.

Competitive REDSEC in OCE

This also makes it incredibly difficult to build a competitive scene.

There are players here who want to compete. We have organised tournaments, scrims and community events, and there is genuine interest in continuing to do so.

But it's extremely difficult to build a sustainable competitive ecosystem when local OCE servers aren't consistently available and the alternative is playing with significantly higher ping.

It's even harder when local games are heavily populated by bots.

A competitive community needs somewhere for players to practice, improve and play against other real players before they can realistically be expected to participate in tournaments.

We want to build that ecosystem in OCE — but we need the infrastructure to support it.

Could Casuals work differently?

I'm not suggesting that Casuals necessarily needs to disappear completely.

One potential alternative could be to handle it more like Conquest already does.

Prioritise filling the lobby with real players first, then use bots as backfill when necessary.

That could potentially preserve the onboarding experience EA wants while avoiding the situation where Casuals consumes a significant portion of an already-small regional player base.

It could give new players the safer onboarding experience while still allowing the wider OCE population to consolidate around genuine multiplayer matches.

We want to help, not just complain

I understand EA has recently gone through significant changes with its acquisition, and I'm sure there are many competing priorities and decisions being made internally.

I sincerely hope, though, that the ongoing problems affecting OCE aren't simply dismissed because we're a smaller region.

There are a lot of people here who genuinely love REDSEC.

We want the game to succeed.

We want to keep running tournaments.

We want to grow the competitive scene.

We want new players to discover the game.

And most importantly, we want people to still be playing REDSEC in OCE months from now.

The OCE community has already demonstrated that there is a willingness to put in the work ourselves. We can organise communities, tournaments, scrims and events — but we need a healthy multiplayer environment underneath all of that.

Is there someone we can speak to?

If there is someone within EA involved in matchmaking, live services, regional operations or the global REDSEC team who has the ability to look at these decisions from an OCE perspective, I'd genuinely like to have that conversation.

We're happy to provide player feedback, queue-time data, community information or anything else that might help demonstrate what is happening on the ground.

We're not asking EA to treat OCE like a region with the population of the US or Europe.

We're asking for a solution that recognises the realities of a smaller region and gives the players here a realistic chance to keep the game alive.

We don't want to watch REDSEC die in OCE. We want to help keep it alive.