In what seems to be the third or fourth instance since Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s launch, 343 Industries has released yet another patch in hopes of ironing out some of the game’s matchmaking issues.
When Halo: The Master Chief Collection launched worldwide on November 11th, the multiplayer portion of the game was a mess. Between the ten-minute search times for full lobbies, unbalanced teams, the constant lag during matches, and a host of other persistent problems, the developer has been hard at work in releasing weekly updates in order to smooth out the online experience.
Just three weeks post-launch and the matchmaking has definitely improved from its original state. Matches can now be found much quicker, however the problem of unbalanced teams and the separation of parties post-game are still among most gamers’ complaints.
343’s latest patch is aimed at resolving the latter of the aforementioned issues. “Please note that while this update will improve team balance issues, we do not expect it to fully resolve uneven teams,” the studio mentioning in the latest Halo Waypoint update. “Our next content update, targeted for early next week, will address team balance.”
You can get a full view of the patch notes down below.
- 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.
So with that, here’s hoping this patch actually works this time around. There have major complaints on the Halo Waypoint forums claiming that with each patch comes a slew of more issues, so there’s no telling what exactly will come out of the December 3rd update.
We’re keeping an optimistic view for now and plan to have our review for Halo: The Master Chief Collection out by the end of this month.
