Probable cause of longer return to lobby times found

[CrazyEyedOldMan]

Product: Apex Legends
Platform:Xbox Series X
Please specify your platform model. Microsoft Xbox One X
What is your gamertag/PSN ID/EA Account name? CrazyEyedOldMan
Please provide your squad mates' gamertag/PSN ID/EA Account name if possible. N/A
Are you using any software with an overlay? No
Which Legend were you playing (if applicable)? N/A
Which Legends were your squad mates using (if applicable)? N/A
Where did the issue occur? Returning to the lobby after a match
Which part of the map or menu were you in? If you don't remember the exact name, please describe the area or what you were trying to do in the menu. Post-game report
What were you doing when the issue occurred? E.g. respawning a squad mate at a beacon, using an ability, a squad mate left the game. Returning to lobby
Did your squad mates also experience the issue? I don't know
How many matches had you played in a row before the issue occurred? I don’t know
When did this happen? (dd.mm.yy hh:mm) 15.02.21 10:20 EST
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
How severe is your issue? Major impacts to gameplay
What happens when the bug occurs? Recently, return to lobby times have increased for most players from around 5s to 60-120s. However, it would eventually connect. Today, I was able to get the error message for what was going wrong.
What should be happening instead? Faster party server discovery.
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Honestly, besides losing matches and returning, nothing. Odds are the dev sandbox servers won’t have the issue anyways, so testing would need to be done in public release.

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Basically the issue that’s been plaguing people, I was able to find the error message associated with it due to pure chance.

Instead of the normal returning wait, players must now wait a very long time. Due to weather in my region slowing connections, I was able to stall long enough on connecting to discover the error case.

The message was (roughly) as follows:

Error: Unable to find party server.

this makes me believe that the allocation/instancing methods for the server bases are not generating enough rooms, hence the large “matchmaking” times at the end of a match.