Matchmaking on 4014-4238-2802: requeues land on new near-empty servers, party join-in-progress refused with open slots, server expired mid-match

General Issues and Bug Reporting
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Summary

On both launch nights (Oct 17 and 18 UTC), matchmaking on our island split players up. Requeues landed on brand-new near-empty servers while a server with open slots was running, party join-in-progress was refused almost every time, and one full server ended mid-round on server expiry. Epic Player Support (case 27071234) pointed us here. Our next events are Oct 24 and Oct 25, 00:00 to 02:00 UTC.

Please select what you are reporting on:

Unreal Editor for Fortnite

What Type of Bug are you experiencing?

Matchmaking

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Play a public match of island 4014-4238-2802 with 15 to 20 players in the server.
  2. Leave the match and queue solo while that server is still running with open slots.
  3. Have a friend in the running server invite you, and try to join their party in progress.
  4. Keep a busy server running for about 2 hours.

Expected Result

  1. The solo queue puts me back into the running server with open slots.
  2. The party join-in-progress succeeds because there are open slots.
  3. The server does not expire in the middle of a match.
  4. After a server ends, a party can queue again without the whole queue being cancelled.

Observed Result

  1. Requeue to a new near-empty server: at 01:09:20 UTC on Oct 18 I left session e4d49c791c0d48a7a75f1eb0bab03c84 (18 to 19 players, still running) and queued solo. After 62 s I was put in session 0fdde1037c1540958b2909141a78d070 (MatchId 16cf5e15-067a-4e42-8eda-8e48249e3d20), a server created about 1.5 s earlier with 2 players. I could only get back to the full server through a friend’s party. This looks like FORT-1123601.
  2. Party join-in-progress refused: refused 12 of 13 times on Oct 18 UTC and 27 of 29 times on Oct 17 UTC, each logging “Incorrect Player Count” then “DenialReason=Busy” with open slots. Players saw “Unknown Error”, “Unable to join Party” or “No reservation in game”.
  3. Server expired mid-match: session 4f05400d2fa04dd6b80b2e283da83cb5 (MatchId 036e7a92-edce-491e-ace3-5dfaac637b10, sub-region VA) was created about 22:52 UTC Oct 17. At 00:59:38 UTC Oct 18, LogPlayspaceServerExpirationComponent fired and the match went straight to EndGame with 11 to 14 players alive, about 2 h 07 m after the server started.
  4. Party queue cancelled: at 01:00:11 UTC Oct 18 and twice more, “Matchmaking failed for remote party member … (UnknownError)”, and each failure cancelled the whole party’s queue.

Platform(s)

Windows PC (UEFN and Fortnite client)

Island Code

4014-4238-2802

Additional Notes

Island: Forever Reload: Tilted Towers, version 29.
Settings: max players 40, 21 teams of 2, party size up to 16, minimum players 1, overtime player target 4, queue 10 s + 50 s overtime, Keep Full, public, join in progress on (spawn on next round), social joining on, matchmaking backfill on, skill-based matchmaking off. Our Verse code never toggles matchmaking. It only returns a lone player to the lobby after 120 s when there are fewer than 2 teams, so they can requeue.

Questions:

  1. Is FORT-1123601 still being worked on, and is there a setting that makes matchmaking fill a running server first?
  2. What decides server expiry, and how can we keep a server from expiring mid-match during a scheduled event?
  3. What causes “Incorrect Player Count” on party join-in-progress with open slots? Could our team setup or the Matchmaking Max Players Per Session / Max Team Count values cause it?
  4. Is our lone-player-to-lobby logic making the new-server problem worse?
  5. What workaround do you recommend for Oct 24 and 25 UTC?

I can share full FortniteGame.log files and settings screenshots. Thanks for taking a look.