There was another post on this issue a few days ago which seems to have died out.
The primary issue seems to me to be that at the end of almost every match nearly everyone on a server jumps ship. This is really the source of what (in my opinion) is the main problem; in around 90% or more of my matches on a 6v6 server, assuming I’m staying in from a previous match (which i virtually always do,) the match begins without a full server; generally something like a 2v2, 3v1, 2v1, something of the sort. There are a couple of cases here; we usually just wait around a few minutes for people to join up, which of course ruins the flow of the “fast paced” game environment and is just generally a bit tedious as well as giving the defending team a time advantage, or alternatively the enemy team of 3 (for example) decides to just go at it hardcore against their single level 2 opponent, and then after the first minute has passed they’ve cleared the first objective and people who join see it as a lost cause. Of course in either case, once this new match ends, the process is generally repeated.
Alternatively, sometimes the server completely empties out down to just myself or me and a friend, and so we end up having to leave it ourselves. Right now it’s approximately the same amount of time (in fact maybe a tad faster) to just leave and join another server rather than wait through the lobbies and load screens (and I definitely agree with removing those cinematics from every game; maybe an option to turn them on and off, and letting those who want them around watch them during ready up times), but I really don’t want to join an in progress game every time. So, I’m left searching through the server browser for a lobby game, and ~50% of the time after joining you find that the people populating that server all just jumped to another, leaving you in the same situation.
As always there are a ton of potential “solutions” posted, such as the above suggestion of removing lobbies altogether; each has positives (generally a positive of, alleviate the aforementioned issue) and negatives. Sure, I think going to lobby is fine, as the last couple of posters mentioned it’s a nice short break to grab a drink, make some coffee, take a leak, or whatever. On the other hand, I would much prefer an improved game experience, I could change my workflow for the game a bit to find time to go to the bathroom or get a drink if this was a solution the developers decided to implement. The other post had recommendations of minor incentives for hanging out on the same server; I don’t see any problem with that either, and whether it would work or not I don’t know, but it’s an idea.
Finally, most of the other discussion was dominated with various types of excuses for people leaving the servers, which were all legitimate and some of which couldn’t be addressed (people being done playing for the day for example,) but I don’t think trying to explain it away helps the issue. Identifying the primary reasons servers are emptying may be helpful, but in the end it doesn’t help consistently find games that I can play out from beginning to end starting with a full server.
tl;dr - Do people think it’s an issue (or have the same experience) that most games start far from being full and take too much time to fill up? Are y’all generally fine with this situation or joining in progress games, or is there some expectation of this resolving itself?
