Waiting for players on non co-op chalenges

I get this very frequently now in the past two days. It continues onward this noon after the unscheduled server maintenance. I'm playing solo. Always have been. At  most times, the server lobby is capped at a 100 or however many players fit in (occassionally checking the social screen where you can spectate and teleport to others) -- never had this issue before. Even playing coop with crossplay, two consoles, and a PC, varying loading times (?) and it always started instantly. Nowdays however? I have to wait 1-2 minutes for any one mission to start. Are you telling me there are limited slots for each mission and the game tries to wait until others have completed x challenge? That would  make no sense! The game hides all other entities by default anyway when I'm inside a challenge so why would there be limited slots??? This bug is devastating and honestly makes me want to log off immediately again. Please make a great effort to remove more and more friction (non-gameplay) from this title!! 

Related wish: https://forums.ea.com/discussions/skate-en/request-gameplay-options-for-better-flow/12528704

I also noticed that if you disable the dialogue text in the accessibility menu, you cannot even skip the dialogue anymore. I find myself regularly hitting the skip button instinctively and having to wait, the bug has something to do with trying to skip the dialogue part, atleast it has not happened to me after i have let the "cutscene" play out

OP PLEASE update the post to explain the workaround of not skipping, most people are not looking at any of the comments before leaving their own

So frustrating. And still happening

Hey there,

Thank you all for your reports. The team is aware of this issue.

As some players have commented, if you wait around 1 minute without skipping, it should go through without any issue.

-Groguet

This continues to happen to me and it's getting really annoying, as I have to Alt+F4 the entire game. I am starting challenges Solo, and I am not in a party. But over and over again I get stuck on "Waiting for Players" and I can't move or open my menu.

I feel you man, I’ve noticed it happens more often if you skip the cutscenes before the challenge starts so you have to put up with the VEE voiceover for the glitch not to happen 

Is anyone else having hte issue when you have to 'wait for players' on solo challenges?

It only takes about 30-40 secs to time out but it's happening quite a lot and it does impact on the flow of the game.

Sick grip btw