Maybe Relic fears lobbies would split the player base too much, as the community is not that big. In Wargame: Red Dragon, sometimes you sit there for ages to have enough people join your game, while there are 10-20 lobbies waiting for players. At the same time hardly anyone is searching for automatch.
Less players @ automatch would presumably lead to longer waiting times and more disparity in team strength, which would then frustrate people and make them abandon automatch even more... so I guess for a community of this size, "forced" automatch might be the best way to go. Also, chances are higher you get equally skilled opponents compared to lobby games.
Somewhat agree, on the other hand I know about 15 people who don't want to play the game because of lobbies.
I have 3 friends that bought the game but never installed it after I told them it doesn't have custom game lobby (real life friends)
VCOH had more players in dying days than COH2, with lobbies. I think that not having lobbies is actually hurting player base.
I personally don't play very often because I cannot take more than 1-2 games a week with terrible balance (either I get steamrolled in 2v2 with 'I just installed the game' partner or I get someone pretty good and we steamroll some 2 poor noobs.
Neither is enjoyable for me
The only way to get equally skilled opponents in team games is through lobby or have playing partner (and that's not very often either), but who has time to keep COH2 playing schedule