Halo gets another Matchmaking patch

The Halo: Master Chief Collection is one of the best value propositions in all of gaming right now. For the price of one game, you get all of the numbered Halo games. If you own an Xbox One and love some space-bound pew pew pew, it’s too good to pass up – as long as you don’t mind sticking to the single player. The game’s multiplayer has been functionally broken since launch, with a myriad of matchmaking issues preventing players from being able to play the multiplayer. A patch released last week promised to fix those issues, but didn’t. There’s a new one now, and hopefully it makes the game’s multiplayer work.

The new patch weighs in at 523MB and, says Halo Waypoint, “addresses a number of matchmaking issues, fixes various bugs related to UI and the party system, and also improves overall stability”.

Matchmaking

• Made improvements to the way the matchmaking system handles player matching
• Made improvements to the team selection process to improve team balancing
• Made an update to the party system to improve searching with parties (2+ players)
• Made further improvements to how matchmaking progress is communicated to the player
• Made an update to ensure that players do not enter a non-joinable state after searching for a match
• Made an update to ensure that the “Game Session” UI does not persist after leaving a matchmaking lobby
• Resolved a variety of incorrectly displayed matchmaking prompts
• Improved matchmaking roster presentation during team creation phase to remove roster flickering
• Corrected a “connecting to host” message that incorrectly displayed during the matchmaking searching phase
• Made an update to ensure that FFA players do not appear as if they are on the red team in the pre-game lobby

Party, Lobby, and Custom Games

• Made an update to ensure that custom game settings persist between matches
• Made an update to ensure that player’s player emblems load correctly when returning to lobby
• Made an update to improve nameplate and emblem display
• Improved the display of emblems in the “Games Session Details” screen
• Made improvements to parties to ensure that parties are merged when the host joins another player and “brings party”
• Made an update to improve party stability after completing a matchmaking game
• Made an update to ensure that players are joinable after playing a matchmaking game

Stability

• Made a variety of updates to improve UI stability
• Resolved stability issues that occurred while viewing medals in “Player Details”
• Made an update to prevent stability issues caused by controller disconnects
• Made an update to improve post-game-carnage-report stability
• Made an update to address in-game stability for Halo 2
• Improved matchmaking stability while searching with parties (2+ players)
• Addressed a crash that could occur after searching in the Halo 2: Anniversary Rumble playlist
• Resolved a variety of miscellaneous stability issues to improve overall performance

Achievements

• Made an update to ensure that the “Zealot” achievement is unlockable

343’s Bonnie Ross recently apologised for the game being released in its less than ideal state, but the damage may have already been done. Have any of you tried playing the game with the new, new patch? Has matchmaking been fixed, or are you still spending your time not playing the game?

Last Updated: November 27, 2014