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We know people are curious about our population and every now and then we see estimates. There was a recent reddit post where I corrected a math mistake resulting in the number 150k, which has since been misquoted as an estimate for how many players we see across a ranking season. That number has absolutely nothing to do with our current population, and is, in fact, a small fraction compared to what we see in just a month, let alone an entire season.I’m not here to give out raw numbers, but H5’s population is currently in great shape.Keep in mind, though, that your individual experience in matchmaking is going to depend on several factors:These factors make judging population based on your matchmaking experience misleading.One of the items on this list we haven’t talked much about is Playlist Competitiveness. Some game modes are more sensitive to skill gap than others. For example, modes like SWAT and Super Fiesta still have near even matches even with a significant skill gap between teams. For that reason, we aren’t as tight on their matchmaking requirements.On the other hand, the game modes we see in most of the ranked playlists are sensitive to the skill gap, so the matchmaker tries longer, and also outright prevents matches beyond certain gaps. In ranked playlists, you wait longer because it has to be stricter to prevent bad matches.We get asked a lot about the how the different playlists rank in popularity, so below I’ve ranked each playlist by how popular they were in the last week.Keep in mind that while rotationals like Shotty Snipers look decent in this list, they historically drop off quickly over the 2 weeks we run them, so we take them down before they overstay their welcome. Its current status is typical for how long it’s been up and it has been dropping steadily.SlayerWarzoneSuper FiestaHeroic Warzone FirefightBig Team BattleShotty SnipersLegendary Warzone FirefightInfectionTeam ArenaMythic Warzone FirefightHaloWC PreviewSWATDoublesAction SackFree-For-AllBreakoutWarzone AssaultSnipersGrifballMany of you have brought to our attention that it’s possible to see a full match get set up, someone leaves, and then it struggles to fill that slot. It might actually be unrelated to matchmaking, strangely enough, and we are actively investigating it.After this week, I'll be on vacation until the new year, so no posts for a couple of weeks. Everyone have a good one!