Whenever I try to join an online match, I find myself in an empty lobby. Only the leave button works. Bot matches make my game crash when I click start game. Sometimes I even get a nice "Microsoft Windows is not responding" window. Windows 8.1 if that matters, everything worked until some builds ago. Screenshot:
PA don't need to open any ports on your side so it's doesn't mater. To be fair I not sure what might cause this behavior, but did you tried to check integrity of game files?