[Locked] Halo Insider MCC Flight Three: Updated (11/8/19)

Hey Friends,

The first phase for the latest Halo Insider MCC Flight Three has begun today. The first set of users for Steam have been invited today. We are targeting sending out another wave of invitations in the next couple of days. This will include expanding flight coverage to the Windows 10 version from the Microsoft Store and Windows 7 version from Steam. These users will be invited in the future as we first need to address a couple blocking issues and re-send them through Rings 1 and 2 to validate.

Important Note: If you are invited today to the Steam version and attempt to play on a Windows 7 machine, it will not be supported until we resolve the issues mentioned above.

For those of you who were invited, you should have received two emails today. One with your invitation and all the details for this flight. This includes important things of note (which you should really read as they are… well… Important), discussing that there are no restrictions for streaming and creating content from the flight, it outlines the goals for this flight, and outlines the content and play sessions for this flight. The final key note is it also outlines the Known Issues for this flight which can be found HERE.

Note: If you are not a participant of this flight, neither of those links will work.

If you have been invited, please be sure to read through it prior to submitting any new issues via the Halo Support site.

Content of Flight
Each day of this flight will have unique offerings for playlists in social, ranked, and Firefight matchmaking. For matchmaking offerings, you will want to be online during the scheduled play sessions for your best bet to find a match. The duration of the flight is from October 29 through November 5. After 1:00 PM PT on November 5 matchmaking will become unavailable.

Campaign Missions

• Halo: Reach Campaign Missions: Noble Actual and Winter Contingency.

Firefight Matchmaking Offerings

• 4-player Heroic standard Firefight: will be played on Beachhead, Corvette, and Holdout.
• 4-player Normal grab bag Firefight: will be played on Beachhead, Corvette, and Holdout.

Multiplayer Matchmaking Offerings

• 2v2 Social: Slayer, Flag and Bomb, Zone Control, and Asset Denial will be played on maps Countdown, Powerhouse, and Zealot.
• 4v4 Social: Slayer, Flag and Bomb, Zone Control, Asset Denial, Action Sack, Swat, and Snipers will be played on Countdown, Powerhouse, Zealot, and Tempest.
• 8v8 Social: Slayer, Flag and Bomb, Zone Control, Asset Denial, Action Sack, and Snipers will be played on Tempest, Breakpoint, and Ridgeline.
• Halo: Reach Team Hardcore: Slayer and Capture the Flag will be played on maps Countdown and Zealot.
• Halo: Reach Invasion: Invasion will be played on the map Breakpoint.

Scheduled Play Sessions
October 29, 5:00 PM PT - 9:00 PM PT

• Social: 4v4
• Competitive: Team Hardcore
• Firefight: Arcade

October 30, 10:00 AM PT - 1:00 PM PT & 5:00 PM PT - 9:00 PM PT

• Social: 8v8
• Competitive: Team Hardcore
• Firefight: Heroic

October 31, 10:00 AM PT - 1:00 PM PT & 5:00 PM PT - 9:00 PM PT

• Social: 4v4
• Competitive: Team Hardcore
• Firefight: Arcade

November 1, 10:00 AM PT - 1:00 PM PT & 5:00 PM PT - 9:00 PM PT

• Social: 2v2
• Competitive: Invasion
• Firefight: Arcade

November 2, 10:00 AM PT - 1:00 PM PT & 5:00 PM PT - 9:00 PM PT

• Social: 4v4
• Competitive: Team Hardcore
• Firefight: Arcade

November 3, 10:00 AM PT - 1:00 PM PT & 5:00 PM PT - 9:00 PM PT

• Social: 8v8
• Competitive: Team Hardcore
• Firefight: Heroic

November 4, 10:00 AM PT - 1:00 PM PT & 5:00 PM PT - 9:00 PM PT

• Social: 4v4
• Competitive: Team Hardcore
• Firefight: Arcade

November 5, 10:00 AM PT - 1:00 PM PT

• Social: 8v8
• Competitive: Team Hardcore
• Firefight: Heroic

Halo Support Site
During this flight users who are invited will have access to the Halo Support site. Please report any issues you find at this website if it does not exist already in the Known Issues List.

As a reminder, it can take some time to receive these emails and be sure to check your spam/junk folders. As well, we know we can’t invite everyone, but we appreciate everyone’s support. There will be more opportunities to participate in future flights as we go on this journey to bring MCC to PC.

Thank you everyone for helping by participating in this flight and helping us make sure Halo: Reach is the best it can be when it is released in the future. If there are any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Cheers,
Postums

Halo: Reach PC Flight Update 11/8/19
We’re deep into our Halo: Reach PC flight (also known as “flight three”) and appreciate everyone who is putting in time to play and provide critical feedback. This flight began on 10/29 and was originally scheduled to run through 11/5 but earlier this week we made the call to keep the good times rolling for at least another week. Check out Postum’s post HERE for the extended schedule of daily flight activities up through November 12.

The flight was extended to give the team more time and opportunity to investigate and work on a number of the top issues being reported by players. The team is currently working on a patch which we hope to release early next week that will include a number of improvements to many areas of the game. Once this update is ready we’ll share detailed patch notes but in addition to a few specific fixes we’re also eager to integrate more recent code into the flight which should resolve a number of the known issues that were present at the start. For context, when a flight build is ‘cut’, it’s often several weeks behind the latest and greatest release build within the studio so a lot has been happening since this flight began last month. Once this patch is ready and deployed, no action will be required on your part – your MCC Insider build will automatically update and be ready to go.

We’re not entirely sure what the new end date will be. It’s largely dependent on when the patch is ready, clears Ring 1 and Ring 2 testing (underway now), and gets released to Ring 3. We want to ensure there’s enough time after the patch for players to check everything out and provide updated feedback so it’s quite likely we’re going to keep the lights on a bit longer. A lot of folks are asking if this means we’ll add more users to the current flight – that’s TBD at the moment but we’ll keep you posted. We do expect the Windows 7 blocking issue to be resolved with this patch so it stands to reason that at a minimum we’d likely add some Windows 7 users to help test Reach on that platform.

Top Issues Update
Over the past week+ we’ve received lots insightful feedback and numerous helpful bug tickets via the Halo Support site. The team has been actively investigating and working through many of these issues and while we do plan to share a more robust status report post-flight (since the patch should positively impact a number of areas), I did want to give a few quick updates on some of the current areas of focus.

Mouse Input – Reports of mouse input issues/latency/concerns have come in from a number of players and is a top priority for the team. This feedback is generally new to flight three – for the most part, mouse feedback from “Fireflight” was overall quite positive. We believe a few things that changed in the build, along with the fact that this flight is MP focused, has contributed to the increase in feedback for mouse ‘feel.’ This isn’t a trivial matter – while many users have expressed concern and negative experiences, many others have stated it feels good. Further, we’ve seen a few different creative solutions from the community where the issue went away entirely if they changed mouse hardware or adjusted a setting. We are taking this seriously and do believe there is something going on here, but it’s not a clear cut issue or solution thus far.

One thing we are aware of is that playing above 60FPS does seem to introduce additional input delay. While this ideally shouldn’t be the case, our tests have shown it can happen (remember that this game was originally built for 30FPS, not even 60, and certainly not ‘uncapped’ – support for VFR is ‘experimental’). When this patch is released, the VFR (Variable Frame Rate) option in the settings menu will be removed from the build. This is not intended to be a final ‘solution’ to this issue, nor will this change be permanent (this experimental feature will come back in some form for release). But we are seeing that the majority of players giving feedback are indeed running >60FPS so we’d like to eliminate that variable from the equation and see how it affects people’s experience. Additionally, the team discovered an issue where mouse input could be at a lower CPU priority than it should be, which could also result in some input delays. This is addressed in the upcoming patch. We’re eager to see if players notice an improvement with these two adjustments along with incorporating the latest and greatest code base. Work continues on this, and we appreciate everyone who has taken extra time to share more detailed reports, analysis, and have tried various troubleshooting techniques of their own as we tackle this issue together.

Server Issues – Some players have reported less than ideal Matchmaking experiences on dedicated servers citing issues with hit-detection and other latency-related problems. This is also a top priority for the team and there have already been a few behind the scenes changes as investigations continue and a few promising discoveries. We'll share more here soon.

Chat Filtering - Evidently having your text chat aggressively filtered is something players don’t really like! We’ve heard you loud and clear (even with the filters enabled). We’re not thrilled with this implementation either so for the time being, text chat filtering is being removed from the build with the upcoming patch. As for the longer term plan – that’s still TBD, but we agree that an over-aggressive filter isn’t the ideal outcome. Oh, and I'm also told the default key to chat is changing and the team is working on allowing proper key-binding of this function.

Push to Talk - Not only do players not enjoy having their words filtered, turns out they also don’t enjoy having a full-time hot mic while playing. We don’t like that either (true story I almost got myself into trouble playing at my desk with my mic picking up office chatter). We don’t expect this to be changed with this next patch, but the team is working on it.

Progression - We’ve gotten some great feedback around this new area of the game and have gotten even greater data from folks just playing! Earlier this week changes were made to adjust the tuning and XP earn rates and the team is continuing to monitor data and feedback to get it to dialed in. Let us know how it feels now that some initial tweaks have been made!

Getting Stuck in Menus / Misc. Crashes - Some of these issues were known before the flight began and should be resolved in this upcoming patch. Others are still actively being investigated and worked on. We have plenty of documentation and Support tickets around the ‘getting stuck in a menu’ option but if you encounter crashes or soft-locks, please do continue to file bug tickets at the Halo Support site.

Looking Ahead
Whew, thanks for reading this far! These issues noted above (along with various other areas) are the reason we flight! We’ve made some great progress together thus far and with this next update we’re expecting to see even more improvement. But, we also want folks to remember that even when Reach eventually does launch, our work isn’t done. The team has always planned to continue work on post-launch features and updates.

Thanks for joining us on this journey! Stay tuned to @HaloSupport and keep an eye on this forum and your Halo Insider email for word on the patch and any extensions to flight three.