Alright, alright. Buckle up.
Current matchmaking works best when a lot of people are trying to play at once on the same playlist in the same datacenter. It's doing a ton of work, and you don't really see any problems (for example) early in the evening on high-pop datacenters in popular game modes. But 2am CTF in a lower-population datacenter? Oh here go hell come. Because it's so "team-focused" - searching for a team to put you on, not necessarily for a match to be a part of - the system can be too fragile if you're in a lower-population datacenter/playlist. It's partly why you can see a 4v3 game get 2 new players to become 6v3 and stay that way, instead of becoming 4v5 and filling up from there.
So the upcoming changes (should be next patch) add a lot more to this. The matchmaker is able to be much more focused on whole games, and will trust game servers to put their players on the best teams as they arrive. We're also giving the matchmaker a LOT more info about games in progress, so it'll have the ability to make more nuanced decisions, and we'll be able to adjust things on the fly. That'll let us hotfix any matchmaking issues we see if/when they pop up, but more importantly we can iterate and improve the system from then on without waiting for a whole new game patch to be packaged, certified, and released to the public.
There's a lot of other changes to it. But, basically:
-You'll find and be in a match more quickly.
-Games will tend to be more full from the get-go (we spread people too thin, sometimes, and that can make it feel like "nobody else is playing").
-Teams will be more balanced (in number and in skill).
-We can tweak things on our end to keep improving them without interrupting you.
People who've only ever played at high population in constant 6v6 games won't really notice a difference (lazy devs amirite). Those of us off the beaten should. It'll also feel (accurately) like a lot more people are playing in your corner of the game.
Thanks for the explanation. Wish more developer do this. You guys are awesome!
When is TF2?