Halo: The Master Chief Collection (ODST codes being sent out)

[Stoney Mason]

looked for a thread on this and couldn't find it.

Basically I didn't follow this at all until recently when I started thinking about mp shooters to play this fall and my nostalgia started kicking in a bit.

The concept seemed confusing to me on how they would handle this so I had to look it up for info.

faq about how the whole package works

http://www.reddit.com/r/halo/wiki/mccfaq


Couple vids of the remastered maps.





some 60 fps vids.

http://www.gamersyde.com/thqstream_halo_2_anniversary_mp_sanctuary_shrine_gameplay_60fps-ME1rNlxC1G6N0zMe_en.html (stream)
http://bit.ly/1uTUSeq (download)

I like the idea of getting an mp game with a shitload of maps and not having to go down the dlc map pack route. Less interested in the campaign stuff but I was never as big a fan of that stuff in Halo as some people.

[Eel O'Brian]

Buddy of mine used to come over all the time and we played H2 split-screen online. One night our whole team bailed near the beginning of a match and and we still pulled out a win with just the two of us. Afterwards in the lobby lots of bububuweweregoingeasyonyouguys, etc. Good times. Really looking forward to this. It's a helluva good value.

[MCD]

man

I can't wait to marathon the campaigns.

[Cerveza mas fina]

I really wish i had an xbox for this

[Stoney Mason]

I wish call of duty would do the same. Would be pretty awesome to have a updated versions of those games that could be remixed where you fix the stupid and broken stuff in multiplayer. But they run on dedicated servers and have slightly upgraded graphics.

Put in Black Ops 2, MW 2, COD 4, and World at War.

Unfortunately that's not the way activision does things.

[AdmiralViscen]

Bought XBone for this

[Stoney Mason]

http://www.ign.com/videos/2014/10/06/warlord-gameplay-footage-halo-the-master-chief-collection-ign-first

Final map reveal for the Halo 2 anniversary.

[AdmiralViscen]

Lame choice. That is already easy to make in Forge, and most of the remade maps are already small ones. Should have been Waterworks or Headlong

[Stoney Mason]

I think the appeal for me is partly nostalgia and partly just kind of how my taste in shooters has changed over the years.

Like a lot of people I think, I played a lot of the first two games but from Halo 3 on, I moved over to other shooters like COD and Battlefield that seemed more progressive and innovative in their ways.

And I still like those games in varying degrees but I also realize I liked and missed what Halo brought to the table. The idea that player skill matters. That kill streak like abilities are something you should fight for on the map. And that matchmaking against similarly skilled opponents is a really big deal. I don't think I really understand how much some of those fundamentals mattered until they were gone.



Launch playlists.

[Rahxephon91]

Am I the only one who hates the playlist system? It made sense for Halo 2 and I don't remember having a problem with it. Yet with Halo 4 it killed any enjoyment I could have had. I could have dealt with the crummy gameplay changes. I couldn't deal with playing game modes I didn't want to play. I just want to play ctf or other objectives like assault. Not TDM or king of the hill. I want to play these on big maps with full players.

Halo 4 does not allow me to do that. The only reliable team mode was  the smaller version so I never even till this day got to play on the bigger maps. The only big version was basicly all team modes and people would usually vote for TDM.

So I didn't play much of H4, because the game didn't allow me to play what I wanted. I think that's kind of shitty and dosent make a lot of sense. CoD has a playlist for everything on top of having much faster matchmaking. You just chose whatever in Battlefield.

[Stoney Mason]

Am I the only one who hates the playlist system? It made sense for Halo 2 and I don't remember having a problem with it. Yet with Halo 4 it killed any enjoyment I could have had. I could have dealt with the crummy gameplay changes. I couldn't deal with playing game modes I didn't want to play. I just want to play ctf or other objectives like assault. Not TDM or king of the hill. I want to play these on big maps with full players.

Halo 4 does not allow me to do that. The only reliable team mode was  the smaller version so I never even till this day got to play on the bigger maps. The only big version was basicly all team modes and people would usually vote for TDM.

So I didn't play much of H4, because the game didn't allow me to play what I wanted. I think that's kind of shitty and dosent make a lot of sense. CoD has a playlist for everything on top of having much faster matchmaking. You just chose whatever in Battlefield.

The speed thing doesn't bother me at all. In fact I would take slower matchmaking in COD if it meant that I was actually playing near people my skill level. That's really become an issue for me in recent years. Skill based matchmaking that tries to actually have good games instead of the stomping grounds that most mp shooters have turned into in recent years because they are just going for speed. But that's me. I think more people probably agree with you on this but I'm over the idea of speed trumping skill when it comes to matchmaking. I think matchmaking in general should be emphasized more rather than less.

As far as the modes, I think its tricky. COD can get away with so many playlists because it has the largest player base in console online shooters. Battlefield has 3 modes that people care about the and rest die quickly. Every other game needs to manage that stuff pretty closely. I think the big distinction in any shooter is always going to be the death-match versus the objective gametypes. Of course there are some people who prefer certain objective modes over others but that goes back to the tricky thing of being able to serve enough modes. Too many playlists and the population to effectively do matchmaking doesn't work anymore. Halo has always kind of hung its hat on having a lot of different gametypes. I think the ideal fix obviously would be to use a cross system of matchmaking mixed with server rentals. So people who want custom server types running specific things can get that. You could also probably achieve the same thing with a playlist for custom games where you could be pushed into that if you are searching for specific gametypes.

Neither thing is most likely coming to this collection though so it is what it is in this case.

[Stoney Mason]

IGN video player sucks but here is Halo 2 in classic and anniversary.

http://www.ign.com/videos/2014/10/15/halo-2-anniversary-and-classic-1080p60fps-gameplay-halo-the-master-chief-collection-ign-first

[Stoney Mason]

IGN streamed a good bit today with the game so you get to see all the games in mp.

Unfortunately being youtube you only get 30 frames but you take what you can get.

[Stoney Mason]

Redownloaded Halo Reach and Halo 4 on my 360 to practice a bit for this with the mp. I'll play a little every couple of days to try to warm up.

My thoughts.

Man I suck. I was never as good at Halo as I was at COD or BF but its just kind of embarrassing how much I've forgotten how to play. Like I can't make my fingers do what my brain wants them to do fast enough.

I like Halo 4. I know the hardcore community hates it but I always just found it fun and I still do. I understand why they don't like it. They don't like sprint. They don't like no-descoping. They hate the loadout and killstreak stuff, etc  I just don't think for the Halo series I'm a purist in that manner. There are series where I am that way but for whatever reason, I'm not that way with Halo.

Reach on the other hand hasn't aged as well for me. I played Reach more than Halo 3 or Halo 4 by a longshot when it was originally out and I remember really enjoying it and kind of being bummed it wasn't in this collection. But now that I go back I don't like it as much as I remember. It's really slow. Especially right after playing Halo 4. And the bloom stuff when you are shooting I hate now. It all just feels like this weird attempt to make Halo into like a sim game or something like Battlefield and it just doesn't work. I know it was in there before but something about it in Reach is just frustrating.

Game is still really fun and really different than pretty much anything on the console shooter landscape currently (halo mp in general I mean). And 60 fps will be so nice. It's kind of brutal and annoying to play these games at 30 now.

[Beezy]

The way Halo 4's multiplayer playlist was setup was it's biggest problem. They would have different match types available to play each weak. That was dumb as fuck. Let me play what I want when I want.

[Yulwei]

IGN streamed a good bit today with the game so you get to see all the games in mp.

Unfortunately being youtube you only get 30 frames but you take what you can get.

I can't fucking wait but man how I wish I could use the 360 controller to play this.

[Stoney Mason]

There are devices that allow such a thing.


http://controllermax.com/
http://www.consoletuner.com/products/titan-one/

[Yulwei]

Shit, for $60 I'm going to give the Xbone controller a good long try before I decide if it's worth it. Thanks though, bookmarked!

[AdmiralViscen]

As a big Halo fan, I prefer 4 to Reach.

[Take My Breh Away]

H2A Gungoose CTF at 60FPS

[Stoney Mason]

[Stoney Mason]

“Each playlist within Halo: The Master Chief Collection uses an independent skill-based ranking system that is identical to the leveling system from the original Halo 2,” a studio representative recently told IGN.

“The system uses the same exact XP requirements as the original Halo 2; players will earn XP when they win and lose XP when they lose, and total XP will determine their rank. You will have a skill-based ranking per each playlist; we ultimately decided not to have a ‘master’ ranking across all four games combined, given that player skill and approach varies radically between game chapters.”

“Additionally, we’ve also modified matchmaking to use skill detection, which will put players into the fairest matches faster than any Halo game to date,” a studio spokesperson continued. “In ranked hoppers, players will be evaluated after each match and can go up or down in ranks depending on how well they perform. Social matches [Ed. note: read: 'unranked'] will also be available for players who prefer a more relaxed play experience.”

@franklez: RANKS: Yes you can see ranks of other players in the matchmaking lobby and if you select a player, you can see their highest ever rank

@franklez: RANKS: 1-50, wins increase your rank (via hidden metric) and losses and quits detract over time. Very straightforward.

@franklez: RANKS: You can see detail on your Ranks and achievements in your career UI, and deep dive on yours and other player data via waypoint.

@franklez: RANKS: Bravo gun talk about it in more depth soon. But it's pretty straightforward braj's.

 

[drew]

Buying this next month. Never played H3 and H4.

those are the two worst, imo

[demi]

Is way point coming to ONE or do I gotta fire up the 360 for that?

[Stoney Mason]

Free documentary/promotion video on the halo 2 remake.

http://video.xbox.com/en-AU/movie/remaking-the-legend-%E2%80%93-halo-2-anniversary/30b99908-0100-11db-89ca-0019b92a3933

edit: Looks like its only available in australia at the moment. Will be up in the US in the upcoming days.

edit2: Working now for America.

[Take My Breh Away]

Is way point coming to ONE or do I gotta fire up the 360 for that?

Going to be part of the Halo Channel on the bone once MCC comes out.

[Stoney Mason]

If you don't want to bother with the link above

[Stoney Mason]

[iconoclast]

I really didn't give a crap about Halo 5 when it was announced, but 343 have been doing all of the right things with this collection. It's what sold me on the Xbone and got me interested in the franchise again.

[Stoney Mason]

http://www.twitch.tv/Halo

tournament with pros.

[bork]

http://www.twitch.tv/Halo

tournament with pros.

Couldn't watch this for more than a few minutes with that team chatter.

[Stoney Mason]

They added the team chatter because people complained there was none yesterday and it was just the commentators.

[Stoney Mason]

Halo Channel app is up.

[Stoney Mason]

Lame.  I was able to get into one halo 2 anniversary mp game and it was great but then I couldn't get into others. And the friends list was acting funky when I tried to play the campaign with a friend and we couldn't get that to work either. I'll try again tomorrow morning to see if its working better by then.

[Stoney Mason]

Woke up. Was able to get into one big team battle and then was stuck in matchmaking and couldn't get into a second match.

 

Get your shit together MS!

[Eel O'Brian]

This takes over 20 minutes to install from disc, offline. If you just want to play some SP today, my advice is to disconnect from XBL and just install the disc, because that extra 20GB is going to take forfuckingever to DL, and if you stay online and get that patch you aren't playing shit for at least a couple of hours or so.

[Take My Breh Away]

This takes over 20 minutes to install from disc, offline. If you just want to play some SP today, my advice is to disconnect from XBL and just install the disc, because that extra 20GB is going to take forfuckingever to DL, and if you stay online and get that patch you aren't playing shit for at least a couple of hours or so.

Took me 15 minutes for the patch and another 15 for the game install

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Live 20 minutes from the location of Microsoft's server farm and have first world internet brehs

[close]

[Yulwei]

Woke up. Was able to get into one big team battle and then was stuck in matchmaking and couldn't get into a second match.

 

Get your shit together MS!

Yeah I'm not even going to bother playing right now until all this shit is fixed

[Eel O'Brian]

I forgot how funny the marine chatter in H1 is

"Stay after class SO I CAN SCHOOL YOU SOME MORE"

[Stoney Mason]

Insane to me that you launch a halo title and one that is pure fan service at that and matchmaking and in game party system are broken at launch.

 

Played about half of the CE campaign with a friend and enjoyed that a lot. Played some custom games with friends in the mp and it was a blast. But the matchmaking part of mp is beyond hope at the moment. Needs a patch like tomorrow.

[AdmiralViscen]

Holy fuck matchmaking is fucked. FUCK

[AdmiralViscen]

Searching with a friend. after 10 minutes we got put into a match but on different teams. Another 10 minutes and we got put into two SEPERATE games, each alone with 0 other players, that we had to quit out of and got an alert that it hurts our record

[AdmiralViscen]

MS says to quit matchmaking and re-search if it takes forever

Quitting matchmaking leaves your party behind

fuck man

[Stoney Mason]

Yep. Clearly something or many somethings on a code level are borked. It needs a patch. Them fiddling with settings on the server side isn't going to fix it.

I'm not even going to bother with the matchmaking anymore. It's a waste of time until it's addressed.

[Positive Touch]

Lolol a halo with no matchmaking

with this and battlefield last year, I'm good on ever considering jumping on day 1 for an online game. and these are fps games of all things; how do you fuck up the basic netcode for these things post-90s

[Stoney Mason]

Since the launch of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, we've received several, well deserved, complaints related to slow matchmaking and other issues. From everyone at 343 Industries, we are truly sorry and feel your frustration. You deserve better and we are working day and night to find solutions as quickly as possible, with our first priority focused on matchmaking improvements.

Tomorrow morning (Wednesday morning Pacific Time) we plan to roll out a number of server updates to help improve matchmaking. Again, these are server-side fixes, so you won't need to take a content update or reboot your console; you should see the effects right away.

In addition, we are targeting another release for this weekend, which will address a number of other community priorities. An unrelated issue with services is also causing achievements to not unlock correctly, and we realize this just makes it all feel a bit worse.

A game as large as Halo: The Master Chief Collection has a massive surface area, and while we made every effort to have the best launch possible for our fans, issues surfaced with launch and we're committed to improving this as fast as possible and get you all into matches. We're committed to improving things as fast as possible so you can have the Halo experience you've been waiting for.

Your feedback has been helpful for us in isolating issues, so please keep the input coming. We thank you for your continued patience and understanding while we work through these challenges. The development team at 343 Industries worked insanely hard to create Halo: The Master Chief Collection for you, and we won't stop until it's worthy of your passion for our franchise.

Dan Ayoub
Executive Producer

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/85d779d52cfd46918b4f8b638f2e3c7b/topics/matchmaking-launch-issues-update/42893877-4f95-40a0-a9d3-d0f8ab188568/posts

[Joe Molotov]

TL;DR = "Please understand."

[bork]

343 

[Eel O'Brian]

I haven't even bothered. I just knew this shit would be broken for at least a week.

[Stoney Mason]

Tried some Halo 2 campaign. The redone cutscenes on that are really nice as are the buffed up graphics/music.

Playing it now I also realize that was the pinnacle of the fun/arcadey style controls of the series. Halo 3 after that feels much different and much more sim-ish by comparison. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that. I just had forgotten that Halo 2 felt completely different.

[Trent Dole]

Online game launches are always a debacle.

[Stoney Mason]

It's rarely this bad. I play pretty much all of the big shooters online and this debacle is right up there with Battlefield 4, and Brink in recent years, which are sort of the modern poster children for horrible mp launches. (I won't include stuff like Driveclub which while more broken, I don't honestly believe a decent number of people were anticipating) Still can't get into mp matches.

If I bought an xbox one mainly for this and this was what I got, I'd be taking that shit back.  It's embarrassing. They could spend the time and money to make a documentary talking about how much they loved Halo and a b grade TV show but they couldn't be bothered to actually do a good job with the shipped product. That's a slap in the face.

[AdmiralViscen]

They launched this game just fine 10 years ago. I played Halo 2 that night with no issues.

[Eel O'Brian]

Here's what I think. This was originally just supposed to be the Halo 2 Anniversary Edition. When MS found out there wasn't going to be any kind of Halo game for the second holiday season in a row, combined with below expectations sales of the XB1, they shifted into high panic gear and threw everything else in there at the last possible minute. This would explain any number of wtf things about this collection, from the static loading screens, to the complete lack of any kind of extra documentary/behind the scenes features, to the random SINGLE PLAYER crashes (just started H2 and it made a noise and threw me out to the dashboard ), to the 20GB we all had to download on day one. It's a cobbled-together product. Doesn't bother me too much, as I planned on playing through all the SP campaigns before I ever touched MP, but I'd be right there pissed with everyone else had I bought it to jump right into MP.

[AdmiralViscen]

Why is Spartan Ops absent from Halo 4

[Positive Touch]

because it sucks

[Stoney Mason]

Why is Spartan Ops absent from Halo 4

It's coming later as a download.

Here's what I think. This was originally just supposed to be the Halo 2 Anniversary Edition. When MS found out there wasn't going to be any kind of Halo game for the second holiday season in a row, combined with below expectations sales of the XB1, they shifted into high panic gear and threw everything else in there at the last possible minute. This would explain any number of wtf things about this collection, from the static loading screens, to the complete lack of any kind of extra documentary/behind the scenes features, to the random SINGLE PLAYER crashes (just started H2 and it made a noise and threw me out to the dashboard ), to the 20GB we all had to download on day one. It's a cobbled-together product. Doesn't bother me too much, as I planned on playing through all the SP campaigns before I ever touched MP, but I'd be right there pissed with everyone else had I bought it to jump right into MP.

Not unreasonable assumption.

I don't even mind the barebones/jankiness of the campaigns. I really do find that stuff to just be kind of awesome that I have all 4 campaigns now that I can play at my leisure. I'm not expecting the package to be perfect. But I do expect the matchmaking to at least work to some degree. Right now its so just so broken its basically useless. And there is no way I can believe that it was up and working fine in their in house testing just a week or two ago. It's too broken for that at the moment.

I think eventually this stuff will get patched up and in at least a working state. It's just completely unacceptable that it was released this way. Buggy is one thing. Broken is unacceptable. That's willful negligence.

[iconoclast]

The one terminal I found in H2's campaign worked fine. I just had to download the Halo channel first (or whatever it is).

Matchmaking has been working for me for the last few hours. Still get unbalanced teams, but at least I can get into a game most of the time. Baby steps.

[Stoney Mason]

I’d like to take a moment to address the state of matchmaking in Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and tell you what we’re doing about it.

Players have expressed frustration at poor matchmaking times, or bad experiences in general. This is something we are working 24/7 to isolate and fix. Since launch, we have done a number of daily server-side tweaks to improve this experience and our data indicates these adjustments have helped considerably, but the state is still far from where it needs to be.

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 next week focused on matchmaking

Dan Ayoub
Executive Producer

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/85d779d52cfd46918b4f8b638f2e3c7b/topics/11-13-update/10e177f9-50ce-4c73-95bf-bbadd2cc6fe7/posts

[Stoney Mason]

I can get into games now...

The teams are almost always uneven and the lag is atrocious like this.




Good job!