The Master Chief Collection's Multiplayer May Be Getting Better Soon

The Master Chief Collection's Multiplayer May Be Getting Better Soon

Been frustrated with the multiplayer matchmaking in Halo: The Master Chief Collection? Microsoft knows it's a problem and is working to fix it.

A big part of the appeal of the Master Chief Collection was getting to experience re-mastered versions of Lockout, Blood Gulch and other classic maps from older Halo games. But finding and connecting to other players has been a frustrating affair ever since the game launched. The anthology's developers think they've found the culprit and are working on repairing things, with a bunch of fixes coming in the next week:

Over the past 48 hours, we believe we have identified the primary matchmaking issue, and are working on a solution right now. In the meantime, we'll be rolling out additional tweaks over the next days to further improve the experience while we ready this solution. We are monitoring the data and working on tweaks that should continue to improve your matchmaking experience while we prep. In addition, we'll be releasing a game Content Update tomorrow that will address non-matchmaking related issues. For more details, please visit our support FAQ on our forums that is being updated in real-time: http://bit.ly/11eRtP0.

An additional measure you will see take effect today, is that we've decided to trim the hopper list to allow us to drive population to those that are functioning the best – this will serve to further increase the speed with which you find games. We will bring the other hoppers back online as things improve, but our primary focus right now is getting you into matches. For details on which matchmaking playlists are being temporarily taken offline, please visit our support FAQ here: http://bit.ly/11eRtP0.

We are doing everything we can on an hourly basis to improve the experience, while we work on our solution. In the meantime, we've found a few things looking at the data that can help you a little as well. We're seeing successful match times from anywhere from 15 seconds to 4 minutes. 4 minutes is a long time to wait for a match, but don't quit out too quickly as it will come. If you haven't found a match within about 4 minutes, please exit the search and restart, as this will reset the parameters and increase the likelihood of entering a match. I realize this isn't ideal, but it's temporary while we sort things out.

I'd like to personally apologize to you all for the current situation. I can assure you we're attacking this from all directions from 343 Industries to the Xbox platform, and we won't rest until it's what it should be. People are reporting improvements across the board, which is great, but we're not backing down until we finish this fight.

• Here's a bit more information on what to expect next week in terms of MCC updates:

• Daily server-side tweaks to continue to improve time to get into games
• A Content Update tomorrow that addresses some campaign fixes and scoring issues
• Content Updates and server side tweaks over the nex

Original Article at www.kotaku.com

The Master Chief Collection will be missing Halo: CE-specific playlists at launch

The Master Chief Collection will be missing Halo: CE-specific playlists at launch

The multiplayer playlists for Halo: The Master Chief Collection have to operate across not only different maps and game modes but the games themselves. That seems to have caused some extra issues for the final release, as Halo: Combat Evolved-especific playlists won't be available at launch, while other changes to the existing playlists will exclude some games and maps.

"We are holding on introducing the dedicated Halo: CE playlist. Up until this very day, we’ve been making (and are continuing to make) investments to ensure that Halo: CE’s online/network performance is the best it can be within Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and we’re committed to making additional investments to make this happen,"the official blog posts stated.

"The current Halo: CE experience will be playable in custom games, as well as the Team Slayer and Big Team Battle playlists, but we are holding on the dedicated playlist until we are able to provide the best experience possible. Lastly, due to your feedback over the past few weeks, we’ll be moving the Halo: CE playlist to 2v2 when it launches."

There are other cross-game playlists that will be updated post-launch. "The Team Hardcore playlist will launch only with Halo 2 Classic tournament-approved game types," the post said.

"Behind the scenes, we’re working to integrate Halo 3’s custom map variant files into the playlist, and they aren’t quite ready just yet. As custom map layouts are extremely important to this playlist and community, we’ll be adding the Halo 3 game types into the list when they can be fully integrated, tested, and brought in."

You can read the entire post for an updated list of what will, or won't, be included in each playlist.

Original Article at www.polygon.com