Praise the Halo gods, Halo: The Master Chief Collection has finally been graced into our Xbox One systems. Oh wait, what’s that? You’ve been waiting 5 minutes to get into a Halo 2 classic playlist?
It seems that 343 Industries is having trouble establishing matchmaking connections server side, and addressed this head on November 11th.
Since the launch of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, we’ve received several, well deserved, complaints related to slow matchmaking and other issues. From everyone at 343 Industries, we are truly sorry and feel your frustration. You deserve better and we are working day and night to find solutions as quickly as possible, with our first priority focused on matchmaking improvements.
– Dan Ayoub
Dan further assured plans to roll out a Day 2 update improving matchmaking conditions, which was delayed until after 5 p.m. PT on November 12. After the server-side update was applied, community members were still experiencing connection issues of up to five minute search times. Some even longer.
The 343 Industries forum team stated today, “…back-end data is showing that the majority of successful Matchmaking matches are found within 2-4 minutes of searching.” Let me remind you that we are looking at two days after release. As a gamer, especially when I’m drooling over the shiny new *The Master Chief Collection, two to four minute hold times to search for an online match is not ideal. When you take a look at games like Destiny, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and even Halo 4, you can expect less than a minute connection times, even if they have their in-game lag issues and day one connection issues [post patch]. 343 recommends waiting no more than five minutes to find a match if you are experiencing these connection issues, and has even limited your playlists to try to help you get into a match.
We are aware that while some users are reporting improved Matchmaking experiences, many users have not seen an improvement. As a result, we are temporarily moving to a limited playlist layout that will allow for players to find games faster.We’ll temporarily be removing the following playlists:
- Team Hardcore
- Rumble Pit
- Halo 4
- SWAT (rotational)
The updated playlist layout will be:
- Team Halo 2: Anniversary
- Halo Championship Series
- Team Slayer
- Big Team Battle
- Halo 2 Classic
- Halo 3
I don’t agree with playlist removal because of matchmaking connection issues. Playlist removal does help funnel more players into matches, which can [not guaranteed] reduce matchmaking times, but we are looking at limiting content. Does it dramatically help reduce load times? Are these maps not on the disk and Hard Drive, so why are playlists being limited? If you have to limited playlists to get people into a match, it doesn’t look like a matchmaking issue but a sales issue. It is bad practice to limit a gamer’s ability to choose, but let’s hope it does the trick. Tell us what you think in the comment section below. Do you think limited playlists will help connection issues? What kind of wait times are you experiencing? Are your multiplayer matches sexy as hell?
Mine are.
We’ll update you with more information once 343 releases it, so check back often. Give us a like on Facebook and a follow on Twitter to get instant notification of when 343 releases an update.
