Portal Conquest 20 player lobby requirement is unachievable

Please please update this DICE, my Battlefield group that has hosted our own games since BF3 never can start our own Portal match and thats with 12 of us playing! The bots get kicked out once players join so they dont count towards the 20 requirement. With bots disabled, you STILL need 20 players which is insane. No random players looking through the Portal browser are going to sit in a server that hasn't started yet and stare at a lobby.

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...

RIP BF6 communities with it...

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 😪 

Bet they still dont listen... Im not even looking forward to season 2 at this point bc they will probably make it 40 players to start a portal mode. The ignorance of DICE is mindblowing.