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[BruceLeeRoy]

I am glad you haven't had serious issues offline. There are many of us that have unfortunately. I was worried it was just me until I started seeing people post pictures and videos of the exact same things.

Its a significant amount of people.
A lot of industry folks are taking to Twitter. Polygon said none of them have been able to get on all day. They also dropped the review score.

 

[DopeyFish]

God damnit people stop voting for Gungoose CTF

i just voted for it

dealwitit

 

[Sephzilla]

what playlist is that in? I wanan play it so bad lol

BTB.

It's fun but not every other BTB game.

That and most people play it as Gungoose Team Slayer instead of CTF

 

[MarauderShields]

God damnit people stop voting for Gungoose CTF

But its fun

Really wish they went with a Halo 3 style veto option.

 

[E92 M3]

I don't think they "took on a project they couldn't do themselves" ... I think it was forced upon them. They were and still are busy with Halo 5 but IMO someone higher up the chain forced this project on them in hopes it would save them from being demolished this holiday season by the PS4 and thus losing possible customers.

I'm not saying the studios involved don't deserve some blame. They knew deadline/release date way beforehand and didn't get the game in good condition in time. But this isn't all 343's doing and they answer to people above them.

Really, didn't think of that? Microsoft seems to going for the developers to do their own thing and giving certain freedoms. Don't know how long this has been in development, but I am almost sure it wasn't forced on them. There were meetings to determine how realistic it was to do this right. Microsoft is having a fantastic holiday line up without Halo, truth be told.

Wow.

Nice contribution, Panda!

If you don't think it makes sense, state your perspective. Otherwise, I don't see how they can release such a broken game "unknowingly."

 

[mcrommert]

I have been playing since day one offline and I have not had any crashes. I have had some audio hangs but nothing serious. 10 hours of gameplay so far. MM and parties have been my only issues so far. just saying that not everyone is experiencing these issues.

Yeah thats not most people's experiences...most of the crashes seem to be happening when the game is over and it is trying moving to a party up system

Offline doesn't seem to be affected by 99.9 percent of the issues

 

[StrikeFirst117]

Just finished Halo CE Anniversary now and am moving onto 2, however I want to make note of a weird bug I came across.

It involved me playing upto Two Betrayals, I saved and quit, went out for a bit, then came back, booted it up and for some reason the game considered that I had completed the mission, even though I hadn't and resumed me on the Keyes mission, weird ass bug that.

 

[Calm Killer]

Yeah thats not most people's experiences...most of the crashes seem to be happening when the game is over and it is trying moving to a party up system

Offline doesn't seem to be affected by 99.9 percent of the issues

I mean yes there are some glitches, but I am wondering if these crashes aren't all related back to a networking/server issue, and they just cant figure it out.

 

[mcrommert]

I'm with you. Disappointing. Makes me angry. It's probably a combination of unrealistic deadlines, deadlines that can't be moved (you have to be kidding yourself if you think that delaying the game was ever an option that was realistically on the table), and bad management.

Probably mostly too much to do and too little time to do it all in. And too many developers/teams helping out (can you imagine trying to coordinate that many teams?...probably was a nightmare for project managers). I feel bad for the developers the most, especially the ones that knew this might happen and have literally no power to delay/change anything significant...and now their reputation is on the line and they have to fix the mess. And even if it wasn't their fault, they have to deal with all of the shit that comes with it (silver lining: at least they'll get a good pay day in the end, after all the major fixes?). As someone in software development, I don't want to imagine being in this situation.

Ah man...so upsetting because I want(ed) this game to be so damned good. I hope they can fix this stuff, and fast. Both for the sake of Halo as a franchise and 343's reputation.

I think a major lesson to come of this is that online games have to have public Beta's. Especially ones that are this big. To do so is almost reckless. I know it seems like an obvious lesson (of course you should do this), but I hope developers are watching this and learning how to not repeat these mistakes. Especially 343 for Halo 5.

Thank goodness the campaign's are (mostly) functional. I enjoyed them enough that I can take my time playing SP before getting to MP (and maybe by then many issues will be sorted?). Doesn't make it much better...but it's enough to at least make me keep the game.

This. This looks more and more like a collapse of Project Management, not carelessness or ineptitude. Where the Gantt Chart at fools!?

 

[Strider]

Really, didn't think of that? Microsoft seems to going for the developers to do their own thing and giving certain freedoms. Don't know how long this has been in development, but I am almost sure it wasn't forced on them. There were meetings to determine how realistic it was to do this right. Microsoft is having a fantastic holiday line up without Halo, truth be told.
"

We'll just have to agree to disagree. We'll never know the truth so oh well. All we can hope for is that MCC gets updated/patch quickly to work as advertised. It's an amazing collection when it works right.

 

[RoKKeR]

Just got into a Halo 4 match within a minute.

And I had... fun? The BR feels great, game looks good, no AAs and no loadouts makes a world of a different.

Spoiler

Game crashed afterwards

 

[AlStrong]

I don't know who to blame, or if there really IS anyone to blame (sometimes deadlines are just tight), but it's been known for quite a while that MCC was going to be a game that was "coming in hot."

Sometimes a game is pretty much totally done a 1+ month before launch, retail copies are already in-hand, etc etc. But other times it's a mad scramble right up until the final moment.

MCC is 100% in the latter category, and people working on it have known for some time that it was all going to (hopefully) come together in the 11th hour.

It seems to me that all of this stems from the decision to turn H2A's release into the collection, and perhaps that decision came much too late where CE/3/4 are concerned, nevermind the integration of playlists and such.

It's pretty clear they could have used a lot more time for polishing, and even the delay for Spartan Ops speaks of timing issues. It's a very unfortunate turn of events.

 

[E92 M3]

We'll just have to agree to disagree. We'll never know the truth so oh well. All we can hope for is that MCC gets updated/patch quickly to work as advertised. It's an amazing collection when it works right.

Yeah, at the end of the day I just want to play Halo 2 classic.

 

[AHappyPanda]

Nice contribution, Panda!

If you don't think it makes sense, state your perspective. Otherwise, I don't see how they can release such a broken game "unknowingly."

We're all in agreement that the game is broken. But you can't just make a declarative statement and act like it's true just because you think so. It's not how the world works.

I asked because I was genuinely curious whether it was documented that 343i wanted to delay, you came back saying it was just your theory, that's a HUGE difference.

 

[sam777]

Halo 4 seems the playlist to be at, at the moment.

 

[Mr. Enigma]

I know Frankie said that real-life conditions are different to testing and that this was basically unpredictable, but there are so many huge issues with this game beyond the matchmaking that there is no way that this all came as a surprise. Even offline this game is pretty crappy.

Campaigns freezing, missing lighting and other effects, UI often overlapping itself or completely disappearing, controls ignoring user settings or plain not working, audio glitches, progress not saved, missions being skipped, terminals crashing, and the common complete game crash. None of that should be much of a surprise. I encountered most of those on my first day with the game. All three of the first levels I played crashed and I see similar reports across the web (some are lucky enough to avoid them). This is not just a "whoops server issues." The entire game has major issues much greater than the average "day one fix" we've grown accustomed to in modern gaming. This makes Battlefield 4 look mighty fine. At least Driveclub's single player works pretty well, so I'm told.

Besides, it isn't like there is some problem inherent to XBL or Azure anyway. Titanfall runs great. COD:AW doesnt even have dedicated servers and runs okay most of the time. Why is the MCC such shit? Makes me think that the MM issues have less to do with the servers and more to do with the game itself being coded badly, necessitating major rewrites that will take quite a bit of time to create. Not a quick fix that we'll get today or tomorrow or even the next day. I hope to be proven wrong.

They've updated the server settings two or three times by now and things have only gone from completely unplayable to "maybe it will find a game if I restart my search three times and go take a shower." 343 acts like that's good progress on the issue. It isn't. Hardly even worth announcing. I can't believe their updates claim that things have "improved." All they've done is mildy polish shit so far. A better update would be to simply say that they have not seen the improvement desired and are still working on it.

I don't know whether this is the fault of bad management at 343 or unrealistic deadlines from Microsoft, or a combination of both. People are quick to choose sides, I notice a lot of people placing blame on Microsoft for rushing the deadline without any actual evidence of this (even if it is likely). Whatever the cause, heads should roll. I'm afraid for the population of this game right now. I envisioned this game being populated for years, the last great stronghold of classic Halo players for years to come. Now I'm envisioning people returning their game and the population never taking off in the first place. We're still in early days so I think they still have time to recapture the crowd, but their window of opportunity is getting smaller each day that goes by. If they don't hurry this shit up they'll have killed the dream. It just never should have been released this way in the first place and they know it, whoever is to blame.

I know 343 is telling the truth when they say they are now working hard on fixes. I appreciate the work they're doing right now. I'm sure poor Frankie's life is hell right now.

A bunch of people are returning this game and I can't say I disagree with them at all. However, I'm sticking with this game until it is fixed because I love Halo and I'm trying hard to give them the benefit of the doubt. Please don't make me regret it, 343.

 

[Bungie]

On top of all the problems, why has no one brought up the ranking system? We are given a ranking system that isn't even fully functional & they are using us to test it. I don't recall getting reset in any other Halo. I'm happy it's back but not how they handled it.

 

[Freeser]

On top of all the problems, why has no one brought up the ranking system? We are given a ranking system that isn't even fully functional & they are using us to test it. I don't recall getting reset in any other Halo. I'm happy it's back but not how they handled it.

Really? Halo 2 had at least 3 rank resets.

 

[Hatchtag]

On top of all the problems, why has no one brought up the ranking system? We are given a ranking system that isn't even fully functional & they are using us to test it. I don't recall getting reset in any other Halo. I'm happy it's back but not how they handled it.

Because, Bungie (hue), no one can play the game enough to criticize its matchmaking system. I don't even know if it's jarring to swap between games yet, because I don't get to play matches frequently enough that there's a swap.

 

[DudeWithNoName]

Halo 4 seems the playlist to be at, at the moment.

Sounds like it. I'll give it a shot in just a few hours. And count me in as someone who enjoyed H4 multiplayer. I know, I know.

 

[RdN]

Sounds like it. I'll give it a shot in just a few hours. And count me in as someone who enjoyed H4 multiplayer. I know, I know.

Tried the H4 playlist for about 20 min, no matches.

 

[E92 M3]

We're all in agreement that the game is broken. But you can't just make a declarative statement and act like it's true just because you think so. It's not how the world works.

I asked because I was genuinely curious whether it was documented that 343i wanted to delay, you came back saying it was just your theory, that's a HUGE difference.

Act like it was true? It was a theory on what I thought happened. Also, in my statement I never said it was the absolute truth.

Either way, it makes sense and something that could have happened. We've seen it a million times before.

 

[Bungie]

Really? Halo 2 had at least 3 rank resets.

I do recall the Halo 2 ones, my bad.

 

[TheCanisDirus]

Really? Halo 2 had at least 3 rank resets.

Shit, i feel like there were 3-4 lol. They kept tried to curb the cheats but in the end they always win.

 

[link1201]

BTB.

It's fun but not every other BTB game.

That and most people play it as Gungoose Team Slayer instead of CTF

Everyone wants that cool emblem.

 

[OrangeOak]

Halo 4 seems the playlist to be at, at the moment.

For someone who likes H4 multiplayer like mysefl it is good news but all matches that I played are really laggy.
I know that it's probably p2p here in europe because I had "host migration" message couple times but it should't be THAT laggy.

EDIT: my fault,I was downloading something on my pc so that's why it was laggy lol

 

[Thorgi]

I got in a match on the Halo 2 Classic playlist. Zanzibar. Pretty sure some of the people I faced have Halo encoded in their genes because I was completely torn apart.

 

[Hatchtag]

I got in a match on the Halo 2 Classic playlist. Zanzibar. Pretty sure some of the people I faced have Halo encoded in their genes because I was completely torn apart.

This is kind of a problem with matchmaking right now. I get destroyed because the only people online anymore are people who really, really love Halo. I mean, I love Halo too, but damn. It seems like all the casuals have left to play games that were actually finished.

 

[Boston]

At least the music while you search for games is nice ¯_(&#12484_/¯

I'm so beyond sick of this music now. Thanks 343.

 

[DopeyFish]

I got in a match on the Halo 2 Classic playlist. Zanzibar. Pretty sure some of the people I faced have Halo encoded in their genes because I was completely torn apart.

dont forget you have very high level players and very low level players all in one place right now

once ranks start for all the relevant playlists, you'll be more likely to play games at your level

 

[AHappyPanda]

Act like it was true? It was a theory on what I thought happened. Also, in my statement I never said it was the absolute truth.

Either way, it makes sense and something that could have happened. We've seen it a million times before.

Good post! I blame it on the fact that 343i took an a project they couldn't do themselves but simply decided to outsource everything out and just supervise. I think Microsoft trusted them to deliver a working game. They came to Microsoft in the last month and told them they are in trouble. Of course at that point, MS couldn't delay the game without serious financial consequences. They weighed those versus the social media affect of the game being broken and decided between the lesser of two evils. I think they bet wrong, but that is just me. Word of mouth is an extremely powerful tool these days. Halo has only so much wiggle room - and a lot of it was used up with Halo 4. MCC was supposed to show us how serious 343i can be when given time as a studio. Instead, they just supervised other people putting it together.

Nowhere in your post in relation to the statement I asked about did you say it was a theory until I asked about it.

As a joke, I like to think they announced it at E3 and went "well...I guess we have to make it now" and fast forward to the shit show we have today.

 

[Etnos]

I watched the Giantbomb Quicklook, I'm glad Drew was there my tolerance for Gerstmann is in an all time low... I mean its fine he is calling the broken MM bull shit, but all the other complains about Halo being slow? Stupid controls? like fine... I guess, that is the point Halo is the only popular multiplayer that rewards you for actually thinking, so whatever.

 

[CloudyTuba]

Really? Halo 2 had at least 3 rank resets.

Heh, yeah. I remember that. The first time I did it all over again. After the last reset I decided that I no longer cared about my rank.

 

[bananafactory]

I watched the Giantbomb Quicklook, I'm glad Drew was there my tolerance for Gerstmann is in an all time low... I mean its fine he is calling the broken MM bull shit, but all the other complains about Halo being slow? Stupid controls? like fine... I guess, that is the point Halo is only popular multiplayer that rewards you for actually thinking, so whatever.

Jeff doesn't like a lot of things. I often disagree with his assessments but still find him entertaining.

 

[E92 M3]

Nowhere in your post in relation to the statement I asked about did you say it was a theory until I asked about it.

As a joke, I like to think they announced it at E3 and went "well...I guess we have to make it now" and fast forward to the shit show we have today.

I said "I think" before the statements. Either way, you might not be so far off the mark with the results we see today.

 

[Grisby]

This is so frustrating. Sitting here with the broken multiplayer and all these Halo maps just taunting me.

 

[rrc1594]

Who the F votes Standoff over Lockout WTF

 

[Noobcraft]

I watched the Giantbomb Quicklook, I'm glad Drew was there my tolerance for Gerstmann is in an all time low... I mean its fine he is calling the broken MM bull shit, but all the other complains about Halo being slow? Stupid controls? like fine... I guess, that is the point Halo is only popular multiplayer that rewards you for actually thinking, so whatever.

Stupid controls is something I would normally agree with but this game has so many control schemes... I'm playing halo 1-4 with COD controls (R3 melee, x reload, lt scope etc.) And the global control schemes work great.

 

[MarauderShields]

Who the F votes Standoff over Lockout WTF

People that want to play different maps because Lockout almost always gets the votes?

 

[Booshka]

I watched the Giantbomb Quicklook, I'm glad Drew was there my tolerance for Gerstmann is in an all time low... I mean its fine he is calling the broken MM bull shit, but all the other complains about Halo being slow? Stupid controls? like fine... I guess, that is the point Halo is only popular multiplayer that rewards you for actually thinking, so whatever.

Jeff will never really like Halo because he played so much Quake back in the 90's and early 2000's. Halo 1 was just a slow Quake game with shit controls (controller) and no online play, so it was practically useless to him.

If Halo evolved as a faster paced Arena shooter more akin to Quake, then he might dig the series, but it is a very slow game comparatively. My biggest problem is the "I can't run" sentiment, like sprinting around somehow would make the game better. Moving fast and being able to shoot would make it better, putting your gun away and sprinting around doesn't help Halo.

 

[CloudyTuba]

Who the F votes Standoff over Lockout WTF

People who have been forced to play it over and over and over again because most of the time everyone votes for Lockout.

Then again I don't think anyone has gotten into enough matches yet to get tired of Lockout so who knows.

 

[dmg04]

Who the F votes Standoff over Lockout WTF

Hi.
This guy. Right here.



Suck it!!!!

 

[Freeser]

I do recall the Halo 2 ones, my bad.

Although in your defense those were well planned and executed resets.

 

[E92 M3]

People who have been forced to play it over and over and over again because most of the time everyone votes for Lockout.

Then again I don't think anyone has gotten into enough matches yet to get tired of Lockout so who knows.

Over my many years of Halo 2, I have never once got tired of Lockout and Midship. Amazing and timeless maps.

 

[RdN]

What helps put the situation in perspective is that Bungie is currently performing a scheduled maintenance on Destiny. They've been updating their players hourly, answering on Twitter... and that's for a simple maintenance.

Now look at what 343i's doing...

 

[mcrommert]

Who the F votes Standoff over Lockout WTF

You think that's bad...i got in back to back snowbound matches...the worst map in the history of halo. And for some reason 343 didn't put in unbound and instead used the original most terrible version

Damnit

 

[dmg04]

You think that's bad...i got in back to back snowbound matches...the worst map in the history of halo. And for some reason 343 didn't put in unbound and instead used the original most terrible version

Damnit

You mean you don't want to relive the glory that is shield doors?

 

[everyday math]

*gets into MP game*
😃
*black screen*
GAME OVER!!!!
😐

 

[DopeyFish]

*gets into MP game*
😃
*black screen*
GAME OVER!!!!
😐

was it as good for you as it was for me?

 

[Welfare]

Holy shit 4 people just voted for Complex over Terminal. We got Complex. Regicide. The game also forced it into a 6v4.

Fml