Agreed with OP. I am part of a small community of 7 players, whom have played together since the early 00's. The great Rental Server Program of BF1 was abandoned, dedicated servers are no longer a thing. Portal was our only means of having our own "server" to play on and manage.
This is now impossible with these recent changes. We have moved on from 2042, and the asinine decision to implement a 20 player requirement has effectively stopped us from playing our games together. Squad/Party max out at 4, so playing on default matchmaking servers is not suitable as we can't guarantee we'll be able to play on the same side, and most of us aren't as "competitive" as the general playerbase... we just want some casual gaming with each other.
Small communities like ours are a massive part of the game, and they are effectively being ended with the way Portal is being run just now. Very disappointing and truly a real shame. RIP.
RIP BF6 PORTAL...
Same, our server is pretty much non existent at this point. One of our guys even made a Cutom RUSH Mode with no start count & Custom MCOM placments but no XP drives normal players away. They suck at this point and im not even looking forward to season 2 at this point because I just want to play in SWEATS ANONYMOUS with full xp again 😪
