So this is an odd issue and has only started happening recently. I’m based in Australia, and prior to ~8th June I had no issues whatsoever finding players for Warzone Firefight & Mythic Warzone Firefight during most hours of the day, and over a prolonged period of playing since October last year, I’ve had maybe 1-2 total ‘Unable to find a match’ searches over that period while exclusively using ‘Expanded’ search preferences. I can also safely say that most - if not all of those lobbies - probably matched me with players from the US. From the 13th June onwards when I got back to playing however, I’ve had maybe 1-2 successful matchmakes since then, and ran anywhere between maybe 2-5 hours total of ‘Unable to find a match’ searches. The thing is, I know the player population is still there; I noted very quickly that as soon as I had at least 1 person in my lobby from the US, I could matchmake without issues. It effects me only while solo-queuing and only for Warzone content; I can find games in generally populated playlists like social 4v4, fiesta, infection etc with no issues.
Considering it worked fine previously, it’s doing my head in as I’m not sure as to what has changed in that 5 day window between the 8th to the 13th. I haven’t changed anything router settings wise, and there have been no changes to my home setup etc (all connections are wired via ethernet). I can only assume this must be something ISP related, or something on 343’s end that may have changed re: international matchmaking.
The following outlines what I’ve tried and the results I’ve had since:
- Standard matchmaking for WFF/MWFF under all 3 options of Focused/Balanced/Expanded from 13th June onwards has almost exclusively resulted in ‘Unable to find a match’, and rarely, a few ‘Unable to start dedicated server’ messages.
- Changed DNS settings in the Xbox advanced network settings to Google’s (8.8.8.8), and have been unable to find a match.
- Playing off US host or with a player from the US in my lobby will allow me to find lobbies.
- I’ve swapped from wired to wireless networks and been unable to find a match.
- I setup a mobile hotspot on my phone and connected my Xbox to that in order to rule out ISP issues. I was able to find a game within a minute, but it seems to have been a fluke as now I can no longer find people again. It warrants further testing during different peak hours.
- I setup a VPN on my PC to Los Angeles (lowest ping available; East Aus to West US), connected the Xbox directly via ethernet to my PC, and enabled network sharing for the VPN adapter. I confirmed via the Edge browser on the Xbox and whatismyipaddress.com that the console believes it’s located in LA, and at this stage I’ve had 0 issues finding games, often getting lobbies in under 30 seconds to a minute max.
At this stage I’m at a loss for what might be causing this issue, considering I had no issues prior to the 13th at all. I’m probably going to look into some more aggressive settings on the router side, and contact my ISP failing that. To my understanding, expanded search preferences basically opened up the search to any and all available data centres hosting lobbies, and I would have assumed that was the case considering I pretty much exclusively ran into US players over the past 8-9 months or so. The fact that I’ve gone from having no issues finding lobbies at all hours of the day, to outright being unable to find even a single game for hours on end indicates to me that something outside my control has changed. If someone from 343 wants to have a dig into the player population figures for Aus, and check to see if there actually are some random issues going on, that’d be greatly appreciated.