Battlefield 5 dying out already? (Multiplayer)

[Tristerin]

So I had an Origin Access membership in order to play BF5 pre-launch, and kept the sub for I think 2 months before canceling.  Its about to run out this month and while I enjoy playing this with my guild/clan and we have a blast, lately we have noticed longer than average queue times, and a lot of "waiting for additional players" in a free range mode while waiting for multiplayer.

 

Im on the fence purchasing it for this one reason, while we enjoy the squad gaming FPS, Im feeling like the multiplayer aspect is losing its momentum.  Anyone else feel this way or is it just me, in my niche timeframe to play (9-10pm CST lol...dad life), or is the game healthy and Im just a nub? 

 

Would like to get a consensus if possible to make a decision to buy...or not to buy. lol 

[191x7]

I'd say buy it (through a VPN from Korea it coes to about 20€), the best game for the price. I paid 43€ on a key site in a preorder, it's about 35€ on such sites. Not worth paying the full price.

[Tristerin]

3 minutes ago, 191x7 said:

I'd say buy it (through a VPN from Korea it coes to about 20€), the best game for the price. I paid 43€ on a key site in a preorder, it's about 35€ on such sites. Not worth paying the full price.

Agreed on full price - Ill use my go-to providers if I purchase it, never pay retail! LOL

[TTesla]

I got mine for $20 from r/steamgameswap (that's the standard price there). Just read their rules and suggestions in order to avoid scammers, and you'll be pretty safe in my experience.

Got it from someone who bought hundreds of RTX cards for a deep learning thing, and I bet they still have more keys (just search the sub, you'll find the post). 

For that price I would really hope it's worth it, and hopefully these upcoming additions to the game keep breathing life into it so it doesn't die so soon. 

[JZStudios]

Semi-unrelated, but I recently played Halo 3 online on the 360 and it still had...1300... or 3100? One of the two XD A reasonable amount of people playing it, and then for each game mode you could see the amount of people playing in those playlists. I don't know why more games don't do this, it's an exceptionally useful feature.

 

I'd check the server browser and see how many servers there actually are. It could just be that the game sucks at tossing you into matches, and it tries to only put you in new games, not ongoing ones. It's even longer when you're playing with friends. Which also wasn't an issue with Halo 3 since it finds you randoms and at the end I think you can choose to party up and play again together or find another group.

[Tristerin]

2 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Semi-unrelated, but I recently played Halo 3 online on the 360 and it still had...1300... or 3100? One of the two XD A reasonable amount of people playing it, and then for each game mode you could see the amount of people playing in those playlists. I don't know why more games don't do this, it's an exceptionally useful feature.

 

I'd check the server browser and see how many servers there actually are. It could just be that the game sucks at tossing you into matches, and it tries to only put you in new games, not ongoing ones. It's even longer when you're playing with friends. Which also wasn't an issue with Halo 3 since it finds you randoms and at the end I think you can choose to party up and play again together or find another group.

True, we are usually a full squad - that could be one of the issues.  Im not sure if/what Battlefield would use as a "elo" if that could come into play as well.  Ill see if I can find some live numbers and servers - I just own a ton of games and while all the battlefields I own are fun - Im done with them - and since Ive already sunk $30 in sub fees to play it Im on the fence lol

 

Thank you for the reply!

[JZStudios]

1 minute ago, Tristerin said:

True, we are usually a full squad - that could be one of the issues.  Im not sure if/what Battlefield would use as a "elo" if that could come into play as well.  Ill see if I can find some live numbers and servers - I just own a ton of games and while all the battlefields I own are fun - Im done with them - and since Ive already sunk $30 in sub fees to play it Im on the fence lol

 

Thank you for the reply!

The battlefield servers suck at trying to match people, especially groups. Using Halo again as a baseline, even Halo 2 brought people together, and groups would just find smaller groups or singles to fill the remaining slots. Most games were 8 players, so it would try it's best to make each team without splitting groups, but if you had more than 4 that obviously wasn't possible, so it'd split the group. It would also shuffle some people around to try and balance the teams at the end of every match. I also know that Halo 3 in it's pure glory allowed for split-screen online and I'm pretty sure in all my play time it never set me on the opposite team as my buddy.

 

Battlefield just doesn't really work that way. They constantly have servers running, instead of making one for each new group, so you have to join a server that's already going. For whatever reason it also doesn't auto-balance most of the time, leading to those instances where you get like, 15 vs. 3.

So, as normal matchmaking it runs like this:

1. You need to enter a pre-made server.

2. The server needs to be ending the previous match, or just starting another for you to join.

3. If you have a group, the previous requirements must be met, + enough empty slots for your group. This shouldn't really be that difficult, but for whatever reason the system seems to really hate shuffling people from one team to another to make "room."

 

In all actuality, the fact that it doesn't make servers or rooms as needed like Halo is why it's such a pain in the ass. If there's 15 servers, but none of them have enough empty slots for your group to join, you just can't join until they empty enough, or jump into an empty server and wait for that to get populated. I'm also pretty sure that it doesn't split up groups (which could be... good or bad depending on your opinion.) so if you have a group and a server has 4 empty slots, you still won't be matched since it might be 2 empty slots on each team and again, it really doesn't like to shuffle people around for whatever reason.

It's the primary reason so many groups have their own servers and kick people when on the group wants in to play.