When Halo: The Master Chief Collection released all those years ago, it not only contained all of the Master Chief-led Halo games, but also a lot of problems. Matchmaking didn't work and there were other bizarre issues.
343 Industries tried to fix the game, but even after months, it remained in a near-unplayable state for many, aside from the single-player campaigns. For example, in co-operative play, sometimes the game suffered from crippling lag, but only one of the two people experienced the issues, usually the one who joined the other person's game. Even though The Master Chief Collection is currently functional, it still has a lot of remaining problems. The matchmaking issues stemmed from the fact that the game wasn't tested using real-world conditions.
Many weeks ago, 343 Industries announced that it planned on fixing the collection and even upgrading it for Xbox One X. Following that announcement, the studio's Frank O'Connor posted a detailed explanation on why it took the team so long to address the concerns gamers had with the title, and what he planned on doing to address them.
Since the game launched, Microsoft has improved the development tools available to game makers and that includes 343 Industries. Certain changes have been made to them — due to the inception of the Xbox One X — which now allows the team to go back and fix the problems in The Master Chief Collection.
In a new post on Halo Waypoint, Community Manager Brian Jarrard provided some updates about the upcoming fixes and how 343 Industries wanted to start a conversation with gamers. Some of the main points he mentioned are listed below.
- A separate, smaller team is working to fix The Master Chief Collection and this doesn't impact the next major Halo first-person shooter.
- 343 Industries will conduct public testing of many of these fixes and Xbox Insiders will be the first ones to test them out.
- Significant updates have been made to matchmaking, the game engines, user interface, peer connections, and much more to allow for a better multiplayer experience.
- The developer is experimenting with a lot of fixes and certain promised fixes might have to be rolled back due to compatibility issues.
- These are just some of the changes and it seems like 343 Industries plans to spend many more months working to fix multiplayer.
The studio has been testing fixes internally for many months, but it didn't have the tools to implement them until now. While the details of these new tools remain a mystery, it's great to see that 343 Industries will finally fix The Master Chief Collection. The update is expected to hit sometime in 2018. Hopefully it will be a considerable revamp rather than what the developer did before.
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