I haven’t played since Day 1 of Season 2, and I don’t want anything at all from this Fracture. None of it. Anyone else in the same boat won’t be playing during Fractures. I actually don’t want anything from the Battle Pass either, so I probably won’t play much or at all until Forge, unless there’s a cool event or a really good weekly capstone. It’s the sad reality. 2 maps and some new modes didn’t save the game.
yeah when you keep finding the same people it means the game has very low population. it happended in halo 5 all the time as well
I sometimes end up playing something else as often now I seem to be having 4 minute estimated etc, hopefully when forge comes it improves, but then it can also be some of the times I’m playing
As for playing with the same people over and over. Aside from general population it also has to do with those people starting the search for a new match at pretty much exactlly the same time as you do.
I often wait for some time for the game to find me a match. Once I have finished that match I often requeue and it goes a lot quicker, due to the likelihood of the other 7 people from the last match requeueing as well. Of course that also means that we’ll end up in a match with the same people again. The other people in the playlist will (hopefully) be in matches already.
So it’s not just about people of that skill level playing at that time but also about people “looking to get into a game at that time”. I therefore don’t think that seeing the same people in consecutive matches is a particularly good metric to go by when we want to assess population health. It’s more to do with how the matchmaking works.
When you see the same people every day (as some on here have mentioned) it’s a different story. Given that we have quite a bit more playlists now than in S1 this is also a relevant factor (the population is spread out more and due to no match composer people can only ever be in one playlist).
Middle of Saturday in the UK and I cant get a game in most playlists without a 4 minute wait. The game is dying, and sweaty matchmaking is making me want to ditch it too
I live in Hong Kong. Asia, where the Xbox brand is known for being very popular… 
343 is just a control freak of a group and needs to learn a lesson that customers make themselves happy. You just need to give them that ability.
343 just isn’t doing enough fast enough to save this game. There’s rebuttals to this, comparisons to how fortnite started, etc.
But it just isn’t a fun game.
The maps aren’t fun because they’re basically channels with wall art. Like why have the structure in the middle of fragmentation have a kill ceiling when you have a grappleshot in the game?? You’re not allowed to move in the way you want, you have to move in the way that 343 wants, and that proven to be boring AF.
The weapons are boring and some are down right hard to use. Skewer, shock rifle, plasma pistol has no point, sniper, commando.
You have to invest time to get good with these instead of just being able to pick them up and enjoy them.
And the vehicles are junk except the wasp. In halo 5, I enjoyed every vehicle. Every vehicle! Except the Oni gungoose cause that was hot garbage, but everything had its place. I was glad to get on a mongoose or scout and get across apex, but these vehicles just don’t fit the maps or the game.
The customization we were led to believe was non existent.
The desync and netcode issues still existing are just embarrassing.
And I can go on.
MW is launching when forge launches, I don’t see halo surviving that cause it looks goooooooooddddddd. I’ve never played but I’m going too.
The forgers will come and make new maps, but the populations attention will be gone by that point.
5000 steam players right now.
I am sure I’ve seen the same people in games.
Also I once ended in a match against Ubernick which was worrying since the odds of randomly ending in a BTB match. 
We might get an uptick in interest with the Campaign DLC. If it is for the Endless then this might go alongside new weapons and vehicles for that faction which make their way into the sandbox.