343 Industries' latest release, Halo: Master Chief Collection, has been as big a mess as we've seen in gaming in recent years. The single player has been loading the wrong levels, multiplayer is barely functional weeks after release and there are frame rate issue all over the place.
Since the game launched 343 has been scrambling to try and fix it, releasing patch after patch and update after update. The next one will supposedly fix matchmaking, but gamers are sceptical at this point, with many stating that they'll only come back to it in six months time when it might actually work.
Still, perhaps this next patch will take us a step closer to that ideal. It is set to include the following tweaks:
- Made a change to allow for matches to start once minimum player counts are met, allowing for faster matching times.
- Made an update to resolve issues that caused false matches to be created, which resulted in a variety of matchmaking issues, including slow matchmaking and bad session starts.
- Streamlined the process for maintaining party continuity through the matchmaking process.
- Made an update to the high-level matchmaking flow that will reset lobbies after each match. Moving forward, players and party leaders need to press "B" after the post-game-carnage report, and select a playlist for their next match. This flow is consistent with previous Halo titles.
- Improved user experience through removal of non-actionable error messages. This will allow for a more seamless matchmaking flow with less interruption and confusion.
- Improved the post-game experience to fix an issue that could result in a player getting sent to another player's lobby, rather than returning to the matchmaking screen.
This patch is also expected to fix some of the balancing issues with online matchmaking. For some reason though, 343 said that it is unlikely to fix the issue of uneven teams, where 10 players will be split 4 vs 6 and similar.
Have any of you been playing the Master Chief Collection? Have you run into any issues this patch might fix?
