EA has shared their insight on how last week’s Battlefield 6 open beta played out.
The Second Week Of Open Beta Was Different
We reported that Battlefield 6’s open beta reached a peak of 334,549 concurrent players on Steam on the first day. Over that weekend, it reached a peak of 521,079 players. That peak came on August 9, that Saturday.
This weekend, things played out a little bit differently. The player count peaked at 406,815 concurrent players on August 14, which was Thursday for that week. For the rest of the weekend, it reached player counts between 200,000 to 400,000 players.
What Happened? EA Shares Their Perspective
Battlefield Comms gave this statement:
We have been monitoring unusual wait times when using the Custom Search feature to find matches.
Our ongoing investigations reveal that some users experience wait times of 4-5 minutes, depending on the mode and map selected.
Custom Search prioritizes filling matches to near capacity. Due to the record numbers during Open Beta, matches are filling quickly.
If Custom Search cannot match you within a certain time, it will attempt to create a new match. This process takes 4-5 minutes to maximize the chance of finding the most suitable scenarios first.
Players that are grouping up, may also experience this more as that search becomes tighter due to having to fit more people into a match.
GhostGamingG shared their commentary on this statement:
So, according to this, the extended wait times for matchmaking have nothing to do with SBMM, but rather simply a case of massive player numbers.
I can’t say I’ve felt like there has been any strong SBMM, my matches have all felt pretty consistent.
This Isn’t Necessarily A Bad Thing
EA previously explained their Custom Search does not prioritize skill. So the system was not just using skill-based matchmaking (SBMM).
Battlefield studios’ matchmaking systems may not have been working at their best. For that reason, they didn’t get as many people playing as last weekend.
But if that system failed, than it could still be a win for the developers themselves. In particular, the developers who work on the online systems saw the vulnerability in their system in the last minute.
If things work out, this gives Battlefield Studios the opportunity to hammer out the issues with their matchmaking systems now. With Battlefield 6 releasing on October 10, they have a little over a month left. It’s too early to tell if this will be enough time to make those fixes. But if Battlefield Studios is lucky, they learned everything they needed to know to give this reboot a successful launch.
