Season five of Battlefield 6 will be the first time we see a proper server browser in the game, but that’s a long way off - season four doesn’t even hit until July. Until then, players will have to persevere through some of the most terrible matchmaking I’ve ever seen in a multiplayer shooter. I’m speaking from experience - I have almost 600 hours in the game and mostly play Breakthrough, although I have enjoyed the new Obliteration mode for some classic Battlefield chaos.

I think the game is in an excellent state currently, the best it has been since launch, but the matchmaking is what makes me turn it off every night. There are some key issues: the game has skill-based matchmaking, no way of controlling the pings of players in the lobby, forced server restarts after every match, and a player base that is split up over several different game modes. This makes getting a suitable and exciting match extremely rare, particularly if you even dream of playing slightly outside the peak hours.

From personal experience, most of my matches are a stomp in one way or the other. I’m a decent player with around a 500 score per minute and often at the top of the leaderboard. I don’t know whether this means I’m matched with weaker teammates and stronger opponents, but it certainly feels that way. I have played every Battlefield game in the history of the series and I have never experienced the sort of one-sided matches that Battlefield 6 provides. It’s extremely frustrating.

I don’t want every game to be a stomp on my side, I want matches to feel closely contested, with some good battles. That’s what the old Battlefields were all about. With dedicated servers, you end up playing with the same people over and over again, both as allies and enemies. You build an understanding - wow, you might even make a friend. Battlefield 6’s current matchmaking algorithm is a soulless corporate system designed to maximize player retention by keeping lobbies ‘balanced’, but I can tell you that it is simply not working.

I won’t listen to arguments about how it is easier to matchmake in this way - restarting the server each time, pairing you with new people every time - because that also can’t be true. We’ve played with server browsers for over 20 years, and it has worked perfectly fine. I actually get quite passionate about this and I swear it’s not just nostalgia: I hate the way that players have been treated in Battlefield 6, as if we are not players at all but essentially just numbers based on an arbitrary matchmaking algorithm. The reason I have always liked Battlefield is because of its community. That has been completely stripped away in Battlefield 6.

High Ping And Bot Lobbies

If you pair the dodgy matchmaking with the frequency of high ping players in EU lobbies, the frustration only grows. I don’t care what you or EA say about how high ping works in Battlefield 6, it is quite clear that I die faster to high ping players than feels natural. Their bullets arrive in a flurry, hitting you all at once, almost as if there is a delay between when you see them shoot and when they actually do. Any players with over 120 ping should be automatically booted from the server, and when we have a server browser I assume this is something that will be implemented.

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The same goes for the frequency of bot matches you start to experience at slightly odd hours of the day. I play in the EU. I am certain there are enough players to run at least four or five different servers full of players throughout the day. Why, then, do you start to see bots appearing? It’s the same issue: matchmaking is trying to force weird matchups together. I guess part of the problem stems from people queuing into very specific modes, ie, some players will just want to play Siege of Cairo on repeat, so if you have a Siege of Cairo match then head into another game, you lose all of those players. Bring back a server browser and you can just choose a 24/7 Siege of Cairo server, like the good old days.

I can’t believe how simple it is to fix all of these issues by just implementing a server browser. The lack of a server browser is a problem that DICE could have remedied several months ago, and the studio has not done it. As a community, we have asked time and time again, ahead of launch, during launch, during season one, and so on, for a server browser. The fact that we have to wait almost an entire year after launch is damning for DICE. Yes, at least it is arriving at some point, but it’s still a disappointment. Will I hold out for another six months, dealing with this increasingly terrible matchmaking? Will you? I doubt it. Seems a shame to drop the game, but frankly, there are several other games coming out which deserve our attention much more than Battlefield 6.

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Battlefield 6

FPS War & Military Action Systems 4.0/5 OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 83/100 Critics Rec: 88% Released October 10, 2025 ESRB Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, In-App Purchases, Users Interact Developer(s) Battlefield Studios Publisher(s) EA
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