Yes. Many people? No. So it can be hard to find a match. And, while I can only speak for the region I'm in, there are a few things you can try to help you find an opponent. And I have found them to be fairly effective.

This is key. As there are not many players, it is important to search when most players are likely to be on. Lots of people actually work during the day, so try outside of business hours--probably after dinner time; weekends are even better.

Due to timezones and other regions, you might actually be able to find opponents at any time during the day, but I think you'll have the most success in the evenings.

Excluding external platforms like Discord, there are basically two good ways to play with others. The key ingredient for both is patience.

i.e. Practice mode. This is the better way to do ranked matches (rather than the ranked match option), as it allows you pass the time waiting by honing your skills against an AI opponent (or punching bag).

If you are looking for a match, make sure that challenge standby is enabled (it is by default) and that you are connected (you might have to select the "Reconnect" button). You should see "Searching for opponent" in the top-right above P2's healthbar.
For all of you wanting to practice without fighting live opponents be sure to disable challenge standby. No one wants to have the "New challenger" prompt pop up on them and get declined a million times, just because someone left their computer, or doesn't actually want to fight other players.






It will probably take several minutes before "a new challenger appears" (remember that key ingredient?), but it's nice to be able to find your character's jumping attacks (avoid lows), crouching attacks (avoid highs), tracking attacks (hit side-stepping), offensive holds (throws that beat some attacks), and other such moves.

Not everyone wants to do ranked matches all the time, so a number of players can be found here. "Thanks, obviously." you might be saying, but what's not so obvious is that not many players have the patience to wait around for someone to start a lobby. I used to do this myself (looked for a lobby, found none, left), and just assumed no one played lobby matches. I can only assume other players do this as well. So, if you actually want to play with someone, and there aren't any lobbies open, you need to take that first step: start your own lobby. Don't worry, it's free.

There is a setting you should change though, before creating your lobby. For some strange reason, the default max opponent strength (i.e. rank) is not set to the highest. This will prevent many players from being able to join your lobby, as a bunch of the regulars have achieved high ranks. So press "Y", or triangle to change your not-yet-started lobby's criteria:
Now make sure the Opponent Strength (min) is set to "F-", and that Opponent Strength (max) is set to "Diamond". Lots of good players also have F- ranks because they just never played ranked matches (some came from Xbox or PlayStation, and don't care to repeat a bunch of ranked matches). Obviously, also make sure that the Private option is off

Now the waiting. This is much harder to do here than in training, because it doesn't give you anything to do. Fret not; you are on a computer, there are many things to do. Open up your browser, watch some streams, watch a movie, browse the web, etc. It might take 15 minutes before someone shows up--listen for that sound of them entering the lobby, and quickly switch back to start playing with them--but after one person joins, it's usually not long before more will join. All those players that hope for a lobby to be open, are now pleased to find your lobby in the list; and you are pleased to finally have an opponent.