Longer pre-round countdown targets bot-filled Conquest and Escalation lobbies
A backend update deployed on October 9 gives Conquest and Escalation a longer pre-round countdown, so more human players can join before AI bots take the empty slots. The team expects the extra wait to barely register in overall queue times.
It follows a week of bot-heavy and slow-filling lobbies after the September 30 matchmaking change, and EA now reports matchmaking is stable again on every platform and playlist.
The September 30 change set out to carry squads and well-matched opponents from one round into the next while still honouring each player's playlist and map choices. It did keep more groups together, but the side effects took hotfixes and live tweaks over the following days to undo.
What went wrong: a jump in matches backfilled with bots, plus lobbies that stalled or took too long to populate.
Lobby continuity: more players are now moving into the next round alongside their squad and the opponents they just faced.
The new timer: once a Conquest or Escalation lobby reaches the minimum player count to start, the countdown now holds a short extra window for players still connecting.
Still monitoring: the team describes matchmaking as a trade-off between match quality, lobby continuity and queue speed, and is tracking server health, fill rates and player feedback as the changes settle.
"Jumping into a match only to find half the server populated by AI isn't the experience any of us want." — EA_Rtas, Community Manager