Empty Servers

Hi @eggfarts1220 ,

This has been the case since day1 of BF games and like that for all servers for online games!

Now it is not always as grave as you describe it here, but yes, sometimes the noted player count on the browser can be significant lower live in the game when you join compared to first announced in the browser.

It can actually also be the opposite!  😀

And you see maybe a server in the browser where it says you have 60/64 players live in game play.  But then when you ask to join, you are told that the server is full with 64 players live and there are 3 players in queue in front of you to join!  👍

Let me try and explain to you why that is.  The game server is running the live game.  And here from time to time, some players my decide to leave the game and some my decide from the network to join the server.  So it is a constant flow of changes of who is on the server and how many out of the total possible.  Now the server browser you use is not directly linking to each individual game server you have out there.  It gets the information once from a domain controller that at time intervals are checking out there across the full server park network what servers are live and how many players are currently on them.  So you get so to speak a snapshot just then and there about how many players are on it, just at that very moment.

So a short while thereafter, it might have changed.  Either up or down.

E.g. I run myself a 3200 ticket server, where a full game round takes around 60 minutes in average.  So especially at the end of the round, you will at times see a huge flux in players listed to be active on my server.  Like late at night, after midnight, it might be completely full and having maybe 8-10 players in the queue waiting to join.  But then when it comes to the game round end, then many says it was the last game round before wanting to go to bed, so a large number of players may then decide to quit for the day.  Result will be that those players that just saw a full server in the browser and some even in long queue will now join the server and maybe only 35-40 players will then actively still remain on it.

And unfortunately then the synchronization of the data between the server browser and the factual servers appear to have a long delay between sync updates, reason why again the number you see in the browser may fluctuate between the numbers truly in the game on the server when you join it.

I may also add that a "recent" bug that EA unfortunately introduced on the server side software now 2+ years ago also unfortunately causes players that are no longer active in the game, that their soldier is not getting properly released from the server cached memory of active player list.  This further causes more frequently that servers appear to have more active players online than what they truly do when you join the server.

It is the same bug that actually causes these same players from being able to join that server again later, as the server thinks that they are already and still active in game on it.  I spoke at depths about this with an EA Developer 2 years back, they confirmed but declined to fix it at that time. And we are still suffering from this today..