With the new influx of players, it has become apparent that the matchmaking algorithm is failing to group players.
My personal experience is mostly on queuing on games against AI (trying to find matches at Elite or Veteran difficulty), but the success rate of getting human players along feels as low as 30% of the time.
The game either;
- Finds a match with 5 human players almost immediately
- Hangs 2 minutes until the game considers including AI teammates to fill roles, and then assembles a team of human players
- Or the matchmaker waits between 2 and 3 minutes to then put you in a lobby alone with 9 AI players.
I had often considered my queue hours or mode to be unpopular, but I’ve had the chance to friendlist people who play similarly to me, and I am now witnessing our synchronised queue attempts often finds a lobby for them but leaves me behind for one of the above cases.
Playing in a party seems to sometimes significantly shorten average wait time, but inevitably after a few games the queue hangs again, a game fully waits to fill with AI teammates and the party disbands shortly due to the long downtime for unengaging games.
Sorry for the longpost, but I had been observing the conditions in detail in case this was a setting I could manage and solve the issue.
TLDR for convenience: The matchmaker in the Practice or Coop vs AI mode seems to fail at grouping players for a game. This is particularly visible when players see each other on queue and only part of the group is able to enter a match after a lengthy queue