Matchmaking not filling small modes with AI to start the round, Bot Quota issue
‼️STILL AFFECTING MATCHMAKING AFTER 1.1.2.0 UPDATE ‼️
In summary there's 3 bugs affecting Official Matchmaking servers:
1. Bot Backfill is not filling small team modes to the required players to start the game. Giving CQC modes long unbearable waiting times as the "populating with bots" message doesn't fill the server with enough bots to start the game, stopping shy of 4 remaining 'players'. There's also an enforced maximum bot count per team or Bot Quota ratio, making bots disappear when there's a certain amount of players on a team. This is counter-intuitive and should be removed, bots should continue to supplement the player-count regardless of how many humans are present, until the lobby is full to capacity with humans.
2. Bot Backfill is not filling large team modes to 64/64 capacity. Causing imbalance and empty games.
3. Bot Backfill is not replacing bots after a human leaves the server.
4. Possible bug with "Casual Breakthrough" or just an oversight, the game doesn't start until there's 8 players in the game. This is counter-intuitive.
These bugs are not isolated incidents, they're widespread continuously affecting the global span of servers.
It seems this change is what's affecting it [BFComms] Reintroducing Bots to Verified Experiences | EA Forums - 12889166
Domination from 5th Nov 2025 where Bots never filled the enemy team, showing the Bot Quota issue:
Bots need to fill the entire lobby, the Bot Quota that's in place is doing more harm than good.
Domination from 1st Nov 2025 where Bots never filled the lobby:
This is the same bug that had its page locked: Latest Game Update Broke Matchmaking!!!!!! | EA Forums - 12808903
Low player count regions can't play small team modes because bot fill is not working as intended. Larger modes are also not bot backfilling to capacity leading to "empty games". The only time CQC modes can be played is during peak player hours when there's enough people searching for these modes where as before, you could search for 'King of the Hill', find a game, and if enough players did not join to meet the 'minimum players required' count, it would supplement with bots and the game would start. This is NO LONGER happening, the lobby is forcing a strict requirement of players, making these game modes unplayable during all times of day in lower player count regions. The same strict adverse requirement is being forced in Casual Breakthrough. Please, either make the bots fill to capacity or get rid of the 'minimum players required', it seems counter-intutive to have bot backfill but then enforce a strict 'minimum players required' count.
Now that RedSec is out, these lobbies almost never fill up with humans. Improve the Bot Quota, let the bots continue to supplement the server when humans join instead of removing the bots.
Furthermore this is part of another bug which continues into larger lobbies, where bots vanish and reduce the overall player count on a team for every human that joins, they should instead fill every single remaining slot on the team up to 32. If the server has 32 humans, the remaining 32 slots should be filled with bots until more humans join. This has also led into another bug where in some instances, the Bots never re-fill after a human leaves the server.
I cannot overstate enough how boring the games are when lobbies are not filling to 64/64 by not properly supplementing with bots. The whole integration of bots into matchmaking is seriously bugged and needs to be looked at ASAP, especially with RedSec siphoning away players in the lower player count regions.
Please just make bots backfill entire lobbies and make the matchmaker keep humans together between games instead of starting new lobbies.
This bug is without a doubt collateral damage from the recent backend changes to how the matchmaker works shortly before Season 1's update. The issue has persisted since then, well into Season 1.
