lobby team size balance when one team is empty

I already posted this and people seemed confused by what I meant (even though I went to some lengths to be clear about it). So I'm posting it once more (with pictures this time!) in hopes of generating a little discusion on what I believe is and always has been the still unaddressed issue behind the long wait times in lobbies.

Lets start with this image:

This is after several minutes of staring at this screen. There are enough players in the lobby for a 2v2 match but instead of getting to play that match, we get to sit here and stare at each other. If just one of us was on the other team the countdown would begin and the randomizer would kick in with 10 seconds remaining and we would have a 2v2 match. But because the otherside is empty... we can't.

Why? Can any one think of a reason the randomizer wouldn't do it's thing in this situation as well? Or why joining players wouldn't be randomized just by the act of joining a lobby in the first place? Or why Titanfall even sees fit to join players to teams before putting those teams together?

 

This is a separate rant that explains my reasoning. Separate because some people are irrationally terrified by long posts. And because I wanted to have something to point to when they clearly don't understand what I am talking about or why this is a problem. Feel free to skip it otherwise.

[rant]
It has always stuck me as odd that Titanfall builds teams before putting them together in a lobby. This makes little sense and isn't done in any other game I play. Any other game you would join to a lobby and *then* it would decide which team to put you on based on remaining slots on each team. But Titanfall puts together teams and *then* tries to bring those completed teams into a lobby together.

Since the beginning this, more than anything else, has been the reason for long wait times looking for a match. No one seems to get that... not even the devs.

Think about it. Got 5 players on your team while you're searching for a match? Well that means you can't join a lobby if there is more than two players on both sides already... and since (up until last patch) Titanfall wouldn't allow matches vs teams of less than three that was pretty much ALL other lobbies. You had to wait for another group like you that had just formed or, after patch 3, for two teams to get split up by one team wooping the other too badly. Even now that titanfall no longer has a minimum team size most lobbies will already have two players minimum on both sides unless they just formed.

And if you were the only person in your lobby? Well guess what? Titanfall wouldn't look for you a completed lobby to join if it thought it could find people to place on your team with you... which leads to the problem from the previous paragraph. Whoops. Again that seems to have been changed with patch 4... but it has always been a major part of the problem.

And even now that the minimum team size of 3 has been removed it *still* creates problems with groups like the above screen capture. But it manages to make less sense that it did before since a randomizer has now been implemented. From a developer's perspective this means the code to fix the problem already exists in the game... but isn't being used to fix the problem.

Seriously... what the bloody hell?

Now, Titanfall has a reputation for problems that, even if they were fixed, would continue to haunt it until at least the release of a sequel. People's minds are made up that it's not Titanfall... it's Lobbyfall. People who play tend to favor attrition because it is (in their minds) the only game mode with anyone playing... which results in attrition being the only game mode with anyone playing. And some people have quit playing all together because of this issue which further exacerbates the problem.

All because of what is, to me, a completely incomprehensible decision to use our metaphorical cart to pull our metaphorical horse. Cart don't pull horse... horse pull cart. And teams should form after people join the same lobby... not before.
[/rant]