Personally I have not found any issues with the lobbies since the last patch. IS THIS THE END OF LOBBY SIM?
You're going to have to clarify exactly what you mean by "lobby simulator" I've not had to add spectator slots to fix broken lobbies for a while though
Not only has the lobby become much less buggy (though I don't know if I can certify it as Bug Free), there's also more players around, which means less idling in lobbies for an hour! May have had some issues with players leaving an in-progress lobby creating problems, but I've also had cases where it distinctly didn't so it's hard to tell. It's always suspicious when you have a 7/8 or 8/9 lobby that takes forever to fill the last slot...
Gametype still changes when i change the map i think. It might have to have something to do with a mod that is broken maybe.
1. Sometimes I'm not able to join games. I can click join, it does the clicking sound and nothing happens. Like if PA though it already is in a game or something. Usually happens after alt+f4 or leaving a lobby. Restarting PA/steam does not help. Once it lasted so long that I gave up - it worked the next day properly. When the problem happens starting games also doesn't work - it just sits on "Starting game" screen forever. Edit: turns out that PA Stats was causing that. 2. Friend list is bugged. One of my friends is not on my list when I start PA. I add him, but once I exit PA it forgets. I need to repeat it every time for that one person. 3. It's crazy that loading a system freezes UI. Does it really have to make the UI unresponsive? (I miss Spring Engine lobbies ;() edit: one more thing - why is there no way to "swap players"?
Without PA Stats I still have trouble connecting to some games. I hit "Join" and nothing happens. Sometimes after a minute or so later it'll randomly connect me to the game if it still has slots available.
Can you reliably reproduce "PA Stats on: can't connect; PA Stats off: everything is fine"? Like even if you try 5 times (on different lobbys!) with it on and fails, then you disable it and try 5 times (on different lobbys!) and it works and then you enable it again it try 5 times (on different lobbys!) that it doesn't work again and then you disable it again to try if it works again 5 times (on different lobbys!) in a row? I doubt PA Stats is related to not being able to join games. My guess is that is caused by some network issue with playfab that just randomly happens sometimes. So if you do only one test it is unlikely you can make any deductions from it.
Yes, after starting PA I was not able to join any lobby or create a game, but without PA Stats it was working fine. I restarted PA 6-8 times while checking that (with PA stats on/off). Maybe PA Stats wasn't able to reach some server and was keeping connection busy, or sth. No clue, but disabling it solved the problem.
Can you reproduce it now again? If this happens again can you log the exact time it happens so I can see if the pa stats server had any issues at the time? PA Stats is not doing much what affects join or create game. The only thing (that I am aware of) that may cause UI issues is if the pa stats server is not correctly responding to downloading the UI files. This however causes prolonged blackscreens while switching scenes, not unresponsive buttons. To my knowledge only two times that issues has arisen and both times it was because of heavy server overloads of pastats.com. Nothing like that on my monitoring since weeks.