This should have never been allowed to even come out. Microsoft needs stricter testing when releases come out. This is one of the reasons I have quit gaming. Too much patching and time to fix things before I can even play. If I have an hour to game, most of the time it was spent patching instead of playing so I just quit trying.
Halo: Master Chief Collection Master Thread
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I agree that broken games are becoming a major issue. However, both the PS4 and Xbox One have standby features that put them in a low power sleep state instead of shutting all the way down. This is an option on both systems and you can choose to fully shut down instead.
If you do use the standby feature on your Xbox One there are a lot of benefits. First, it will automatically download and install all your game patches for you when you aren't playing. If it weren't for me reading blog posts with patch notes I wouldn't even know that Halo had received updates. It's that seamless. Yes, games that launch broken suck but if you use automatic background updates at least you won't have to deal with that part of the process.
Second, is remote downloading. I often browse the Xbox Marketplace from my computer or the Smartglass app on my phone. If I choose to buy something, including the free Games With Gold titles, I can initiate the download remotely so it's installed and waiting for me when I get home from work. These first two benefits also apply to the PS4.
The last big ones for me are quick start up and suspend mode. If you use standby mode instead of full shutdown the Xbox One boots up much faster. Also, you don't have to quit your game. I just hit pause on my controller and say "Xbox turn off." The next time I boot up my Xbox I can just un-pause the game and resume exactly where I left off.
In my opinion, you are missing a lot of the "next gen" benefits of these consoles if you use full shutdown mode. The only downside is that you use a little more electricity in standby but It doesn't seem to be much of a difference on my bill.
Well this has, to put it lightly, ruffled a few feathers in the Halo Subreddit and on Halo Waypoint...
http://rewards.xbox.com/mymissions/
Basically, if you buy Halo MCC in the month of December, you get a $15 rebate in the form of M$ reward points. If you bought it beforehand, you get to eat sh*t. I'm not exactly thrilled with this decision either. I didn't just buy the game on Day 1, but I bought my console early before BF and missed out on various better console deals to get this because I wanted to play it so bad. And we're only 9 days off from a month and this game is still no where near 100% working. Matchmaking is still busted, the promised playlists are still not there, and even basic One functions (Party Chat, etc) have issues within the game. Some users have complained to Microsoft and have received some compensation (mainly in the form of free Xbox Live time) but it's hardly a set form of compensation. I do have to give Ubisoft credit for giving AC:Unity players free DLC and even a free game for Season Pass members. I don't think I'm entitled to compensation that great, but I feel we deserve SOMETHING other than a simple "We're sorry; our bad" that 343i has been constantly shoveling our way. The $15 credit to buyers not even a month after the game came out while the game is still busted though is nothing short of insulting.
http://rewards.xbox.com/mymissions/
Basically, if you buy Halo MCC in the month of December, you get a $15 rebate in the form of M$ reward points. If you bought it beforehand, you get to eat sh*t. I'm not exactly thrilled with this decision either. I didn't just buy the game on Day 1, but I bought my console early before BF and missed out on various better console deals to get this because I wanted to play it so bad. And we're only 9 days off from a month and this game is still no where near 100% working. Matchmaking is still busted, the promised playlists are still not there, and even basic One functions (Party Chat, etc) have issues within the game. Some users have complained to Microsoft and have received some compensation (mainly in the form of free Xbox Live time) but it's hardly a set form of compensation. I do have to give Ubisoft credit for giving AC:Unity players free DLC and even a free game for Season Pass members. I don't think I'm entitled to compensation that great, but I feel we deserve SOMETHING other than a simple "We're sorry; our bad" that 343i has been constantly shoveling our way. The $15 credit to buyers not even a month after the game came out while the game is still busted though is nothing short of insulting.
I was a little annoyed with the Rewards program in regards to MCC too and I didn't even know about this more recent offer. One of the reasons I preordered the game, outside of being able to download and install before release date, was the rewards offer they had posted. It said if you preordered the game from the Microsoft store you got 15,000 rewards credits, which equals $15 in Xbox Live credit. It turns out that the store on your Xbox One is not called the Microsoft Store. The $15 credit only applied to brick and mortar Microsoft stores or a retail copy from the Microsoft Store's website. It's ridiculous that a digital preorder, directly from Microsoft didn't qualify for the same offer.
They wanted an all digital future to get rid of used game sales and rentals but digital customers are still at a disadvantage in both pricing and the rewards program. To get the same $15 credit as a digital customer I had to fill out a "punchcard" that required 3 digital preorders of games selling for $59.99 or more in the month of November. The promo for retail copies directly from Microsoft was $15 of credit for each game you preordered in November.
Now that they are rewarding customers who purchased the game after me with another $15 I don't get even though I supported their product with a preorder and am still dealing with a broken game I'm pretty upset. I think I may try to contact support later today.
I'm not going to complain to them, YET. However, if 12/12 comes and it's been over a month since release and it STILL isn't working and they're STILL giving rewards to late adopters, well then Microsoft is going to be getting a very nasty call. And I HATE calling people up asking for compensation for things, but honestly I can't remember the last time a game was still so busted a whole MONTH after release. Within a month, I'll be patient. After a month, I don't think so.
Still, I do feel sorry for all the developers working on this. I doubt their Thanksgivings were much fun as they were either working overtime or just had to live with this black cloud over them. I've been in that place where you don't deliver a product on time and you're just constantly pressured by higher ups to get the sh*t done. One big difference though is that I wasn't getting death threats from angry customers while I was working on it. I know the VAST majority of gamers aren't doing such things, but all it takes is a few bad apples to ruin the pie.
Edit: According to a post from IGN yesterday, apparently 343i is planning on rolling out another big update (~500 MB) to address matchmaking issues. I swear by the time this game is "fixed" it's going to take up 100 GB.
Still, I do feel sorry for all the developers working on this. I doubt their Thanksgivings were much fun as they were either working overtime or just had to live with this black cloud over them. I've been in that place where you don't deliver a product on time and you're just constantly pressured by higher ups to get the sh*t done. One big difference though is that I wasn't getting death threats from angry customers while I was working on it. I know the VAST majority of gamers aren't doing such things, but all it takes is a few bad apples to ruin the pie.
Edit: According to a post from IGN yesterday, apparently 343i is planning on rolling out another big update (~500 MB) to address matchmaking issues. I swear by the time this game is "fixed" it's going to take up 100 GB.
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It's not actually even the developers I'm mad at here. It's Microsoft. I felt that the preorder credit they advertised was misleading since it didn't say retail only anywhere. Then there was the Tales From the Borderlands season pass I just bought that didn't include the full game like PSN and Steam do. I feel that I have been misled by Microsoft twice in the last few weeks now but I didn't get mad about those because it could have been avoided if I did a little more research. The thing is that I shouldn't have to research their advertised offers to make sure I understand them correctly.
This recent offer, combined with those other two incidents is the part that is making me mad. The fact that they are giving new customers a $15 credit and doing nothing for the millions of people burned by a broken game is absurd. When you know how frustrated people are that they still can't properly play one of the biggest releases of the fall it's probably not the best idea to start offering new customers incentives on that product. Make the people who already bought it happy first.
Hopefully this is better than the last several updates. They may have improved matchmaking but they still haven't fixed it. Not only that but everything else has gotten worse for me since all these patches started rolling out.
I don't remember ever having trouble connecting to custom games with the original release. Now I constantly get connection failed error messages when trying to join up with you guys. It won't work until I force Halo to quit and then relaunch the game. When I do that I now am sometimes getting problems where Halo just freezes on the title screen and won't open all the way. I'm not even able to force quit when that happens. I have to do a hard reset on my Xbox One before I'm able to launch the game again. We are having problems with players being dropped from custom games when a match ends too.
From what I remember, custom games were pretty damn smooth before all the updates even if matchmaking was completely broken. I also never had my game fail to launch before the latest patch.
I don't remember ever having trouble connecting to custom games with the original release. Now I constantly get connection failed error messages when trying to join up with you guys. It won't work until I force Halo to quit and then relaunch the game. When I do that I now am sometimes getting problems where Halo just freezes on the title screen and won't open all the way. I'm not even able to force quit when that happens. I have to do a hard reset on my Xbox One before I'm able to launch the game again. We are having problems with players being dropped from custom games when a match ends too.
From what I remember, custom games were pretty damn smooth before all the updates even if matchmaking was completely broken. I also never had my game fail to launch before the latest patch.
New update has just been released. So much for delving into Murdered: Soul Suspect for me (unless it really doesn't work.)
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/...-master-chief-collection-content-update-notes
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/...-master-chief-collection-content-update-notes
The new update is an improvement, but it's still not good enough, or at least if we don't get another patch by 12/12 I will be giving M$ a phone call demanding some sort of restitution. One tip I will give is that if you don't get a match within 90 seconds, give up and try again. I actually got a timer for my phone and found that if you don't get it within the 90 seconds, you're just not getting a game. The games have been stable for the most part, but there are still a few team balancing issues. I was in 1 game that ended up being 5 on 2 which didn't go very well.
One thing that is annoying me as well is that the map selection isn't corresponding with the # of players. I've been in numerous 10 player Rat Race/Wizard matches, which sound fun on paper, but really just end up becoming cluster f-s. Yeah the idea of pure mayhem in a match is fun once in a while, but not ALL the time, especially when there are other decent maps available to choose from better suited for the # of players available. So it's bad on 343 for not implementing logic for preventing these scenarios, and then bad on all the players who actually vote for these smaller maps.
One thing that is annoying me as well is that the map selection isn't corresponding with the # of players. I've been in numerous 10 player Rat Race/Wizard matches, which sound fun on paper, but really just end up becoming cluster f-s. Yeah the idea of pure mayhem in a match is fun once in a while, but not ALL the time, especially when there are other decent maps available to choose from better suited for the # of players available. So it's bad on 343 for not implementing logic for preventing these scenarios, and then bad on all the players who actually vote for these smaller maps.
Another update.
I've come to the decision that I'm not going to play this game until it's completely fixed. I don't know if this patch did it, but I'm tired of taking time away from my other games and getting frustrated waiting for it to work while I have other perfectly working games (Well, except for Unity)
Update: Reviews are mixed to say the least. For some the patch was great (MM getting matches within 30 seconds) for others everything is borked.
I've come to the decision that I'm not going to play this game until it's completely fixed. I don't know if this patch did it, but I'm tired of taking time away from my other games and getting frustrated waiting for it to work while I have other perfectly working games (Well, except for Unity)
Update: Reviews are mixed to say the least. For some the patch was great (MM getting matches within 30 seconds) for others everything is borked.
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Another update. Team playlists have been updated to do 4v4 instead of 5v5, and most significantly, we now have a Team SWAT playlist. These weren't live when I played last night.
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/...on/e024f78f-6022-4a49-99ea-67562ec5b4ca/posts
It's been 1 month now since the game was released. Tonight I'll be checking to see if things have improved enough. If not, I'm complaining to M$.
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/...on/e024f78f-6022-4a49-99ea-67562ec5b4ca/posts
It's been 1 month now since the game was released. Tonight I'll be checking to see if things have improved enough. If not, I'm complaining to M$.
Another big update has been released.
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/...-master-chief-collection-content-update-notes
I swear these update schedules seem to be timed almost exactly with my interest in the game. Literally an update will come out, then I'll spend the majority of my time playing the game, only to soon find out that there's still a lot of help needed for the update. So I say, "That's it, no more MCC until this damn thing is fixed!" And then I'll come home and check my Twitter and see from @Halo, "New Update Released!" But this time I'm going to resist the urge and instead will finally try out Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (hopefully.)
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/...-master-chief-collection-content-update-notes
I swear these update schedules seem to be timed almost exactly with my interest in the game. Literally an update will come out, then I'll spend the majority of my time playing the game, only to soon find out that there's still a lot of help needed for the update. So I say, "That's it, no more MCC until this damn thing is fixed!" And then I'll come home and check my Twitter and see from @Halo, "New Update Released!" But this time I'm going to resist the urge and instead will finally try out Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (hopefully.)
Well I tried out the game since this patch, and I can finally say that yes, this game IS worth playing now. It looks like they've really ironed out the big issues for gameplay. For one thing they FINALLY fixed the Halo CE hitbox, so now the 3 shots to the head really registers (I was having issues pulling it off but I just assumed I was really rusty.) Matchmaking speed is SIGNIFICANTLY improved, and I had no issues getting into matches on any of the playlists and had minimal lag. I hope @king3pj and I haven't scared everyone off from getting this because it really looks like they are back on stable footing, and when they start adding back in the promised playlists like Halo CE, Halo 4 and other whacky ones like Rockets, Snipers, Action Sack, etc, then we will have a really great package. Hopefully after Christmas we can finally get some games going, because this game is much better with friends (or at least people you know.)
So I participated in the Reddit Secret Santa. Apparently my Secret Santa saw that I was a Halo fan. I got this in the mail today.
For reference, here's the original image.
I'll be out of town tomorrow night so I'm not sure how much time I'll actually get to play but I'm downloading the Halo 5 beta right now. I got early access for being in the preview program. I'll get at least a couple hours in over the weekend.
So remember how people bitched and moaned about being slighted about being shafted for being early adopters? Well, it looks like 343I is offering the following:
A. 1 Month of Xbox Live Gold for free (or some other custom crap that no one cares about, as well as)
B: Free access to the Halo 3: ODST campaign (which is now being ported to 1080P/60FPS for the MCC) as well as a remastered version of the Relic Map for Halo 2.
I suppose this is SOMETHING, but quite frankly it is a little weird. I mean, I don't think anyone was pining for the campaign of ODST. It wasn't BAD, but considering this is the MASTER CHIEF collection and MC didn't appear in that game, it does seem like they're just throwing this out there. I'd prefer they throw in the Firefight mode, but they said they don't plan to do that (maybe if enough people complain they will.) Also, does this mean that people who buy the game later will have to PAY for this? If so, I doubt many will. And honestly I think we deserve more than just 1 month of XBLG, but I'm not going to complain about getting something for free when people have received worse treatment for playing uncompleted games (BF4 anyone?)
A. 1 Month of Xbox Live Gold for free (or some other custom crap that no one cares about, as well as)
B: Free access to the Halo 3: ODST campaign (which is now being ported to 1080P/60FPS for the MCC) as well as a remastered version of the Relic Map for Halo 2.
I suppose this is SOMETHING, but quite frankly it is a little weird. I mean, I don't think anyone was pining for the campaign of ODST. It wasn't BAD, but considering this is the MASTER CHIEF collection and MC didn't appear in that game, it does seem like they're just throwing this out there. I'd prefer they throw in the Firefight mode, but they said they don't plan to do that (maybe if enough people complain they will.) Also, does this mean that people who buy the game later will have to PAY for this? If so, I doubt many will. And honestly I think we deserve more than just 1 month of XBLG, but I'm not going to complain about getting something for free when people have received worse treatment for playing uncompleted games (BF4 anyone?)
I never played ODST so I would probably play at least a couple missions to check it out. I also planned to play through all 4 Halo campaigns on the MCC though and the only one I finished as CE.
If they were going to include another game it seems like Reach would make more sense. It's a bigger game with some decent multiplayer. I've already played a ton of that one though.
If they were going to include another game it seems like Reach would make more sense. It's a bigger game with some decent multiplayer. I've already played a ton of that one though.
