It seems matchmaking has some sort of issue that only becomes apparent on higher difficulty matchmaking (maybe due to less people playing these overall?). The game seems to be quite often unable to match you with anyone and, after a while of searching, simply starts a new lobby. You will be alone in the lobby until you load into the game after the timer runs out, and once in the game it will take another 5 minutes or so until people are able to join. Infact I have finished whole damnation missions with an empty bot slot before that nobody ever even joined into.
I suspect it’s some sort of issue (rather than just slow matchmaking) because if you cancel the queue a couple times with F10 whenever matchmaking takes longer than 10 seconds, you will be put into games that fill up quickly and consistently. It seems to not be a lack of players that causes this issue, but rather something about how matchmaking works.
To sum it up it seems like most lobbies are bugged and don’t fill up as they should due to an issue with matchmaking.
Steps to Reproduce:
Pick any damnation mission or damnation quickplay and queue up
do not cancel the queue with f10
unless very lucky, the search will take 10+ seconds and you will be put into an empty lobby that will not fill up until the game has been going for 5+ minutes.
Alternatively:
Pick any damnation mission or damnation quickplay and queue up
If the search takes longer than 10 seconds, cancel with f10 and requeue
repeat until the search finds a lobby very quickly after queueing up
You will be put into a game that fills up very quickly before the 60 second prep timer is over as you would expect
Platform:
Steam
Approx. Time of Issue & Timezone:
Anytime
Reproduction Rate:
Consistent (Although sometimes you will get lucky and be put into a functional lobby from the start without f10 cancelling it)
I will add to my experience this is both true during peak time and off peak hours. Hopefully matchmaking mechanics can be looked into, this is essentially causing hundreds of 1 man lobbies and people to quit because it makes Damnation seem dead.
I´m not sure if it´s really up to the matchmaking. Just some possible reasons:
There are a lot of poeple not ready for damnation.
There are a lot of poeple just grinding on malice for a bit of loot / weeklies.
A lot play damnation with premades or discord-members instead of randoms, private games do a lot to it.
When you spam “cancel”, there might be a timeframe some poeple coming out of a mission ofc.
Maybe you started mission X in the last 2 minutes, so other players are not able to join it when those 2 minutes are gone. It might be possible through QP, dunno… but overall it´s easier to choose QP or newer missions.
Might be a region-issue aswell.
No matter how, FS should´ve a deeper look into it. I encounter more or less empty lobbies every 2nd game aswell. But it doesn´t feel much different from Cata-matchmaking in V2, so it might be up to the named stuff, maybe.
All possible reasons, however the fact that matchmaking is broken in the way I described is probably more likely the root cause of empty lobbies. It basically exacerbates the factors you named, hence why you come across this less on lower difficulties. I definitely had malice lobbies before which did not fill to 4 the entire match long though so I’m sure it’s not exclusive to damnation.
Since it’s in a similar vein I have also noticed that lobbies for missions seem to stay up quite a while. Repeatedly now I’ve selected quickplay and been put into empty lobbies for missions that have been off the mission board for a while now. Might be related in some way to this issue.
This is definitely true. Today I cancelled the match making (quick play damnation) after around 10 seconds of not finding a game, then I immediately re-queued (quick play damnation) and a game was found within a couple of seconds, a game where people where waiting near the Valk landing spot.
When I got in, the people told me they had been waiting for a while. So definitely something going on with the matchmaking. It’s not able to consistently connect people to games which need more players.
I’ve noticed this as well. There’s also a possibly related bug where pressing f10 does not actually cancel matchmaking, and you’re stuck waiting.