Hey Friends,
Welcome back to another weekly MCC Development and Flighting Update! This week we have some information to share ahead of Halo 3: ODST coming to PC, including reminders and some talking points around a recent server configuration change for matchmaking. Let’s jump right in!
PC Server Configuration UpdateLet’s briefly recap how server regions currently work in MCC. Right now each player has a list of available data center regions for matchmaking. You can see this full list of regions on the networking settings page. Availability is determined by ping to each region. Regions which fall under a ping threshold relative to the lowest-ping (closest) region are available for a player. Additionally, a number of regions are tagged as “fallback regions”. These are high population regions where matches can easily be found. If no fallback region inherently falls into a player’s available server list, the nearest one is added. This is to ensure that every player always has at least one region available to them that matches can easily be found on.
When a match is formed, the best server is selected based on all present players’ available servers. If eight players from a given region match together, the server nearest that region will be selected. However, if one player in that match is from a different region, that server which is optimal for the other players may not be available for everyone.
When we launched MCC on PC, we set Southeast Asia as a fallback region due to the number of preorders we saw from players in that part of the world. However, after monitoring the current population in that region, we identified that it no longer fulfills our goals for a fallback region. It was significantly less populated than any other fallback region. So, a few weeks ago, we removed this region from our fallback list.
This means that players in Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia will now have West US added to their available server list as it is the nearest fallback region. Again, this is a
fallback and a match formed entirely from players in Oceania will be hosted on a more local server. But, if such a match is not found, players will fall back to West US.
Once our server region selection feature comes online, players will have the choice between faster matches or a better connection. This feature will be flighting fairly soon. Until then, it’s important that our fallback regions are ones where players can reliably and quickly find matches.
Register for Halo InsiderAlthough flighting isn’t going on right now, now is a perfect time to sign-up. For those looking to try out features like the Custom Game Browser and other goodness discussed in our monthly blogs, click the link to register for the
Halo Insider program and get yourself entered to participate in future flights. Please make sure to only register once as we’ve seen some folks have issues when using multiple accounts/emails. And as always, please make sure you update your profile from time to time. It helps us ensure we are selecting a variety of players with different specifications. This helps shows us you are still active and are wanting to participate. Also, playing Halo games helps show us you are still interested in participating in future flights too as we know you are active.
MCC Legacy UGC SupportWe brought this up in last month’s MCC Development Update, but we wanted to reiterate it here so players can spread the word to others. We’re approaching the one-year mark of MCC being on PC. Our first update, which added PC support, included many other changes for all platforms. One of those changes included a new UGC (User Generated Content) File Share cloud storage which wasn’t tied to Xbox. This is also where we migrated your old Xbox 360 UGC to behind the scenes last year!
To support this new File Share storage, we had to implement a migration plan specific to the Xbox One version of the game. Before the update last year, your “private” and “public” File Share items in MCC were stored in storage specific to the Xbox platform. Our MCC migration plan was to migrate this Xbox One-specific UGC the first time the user signed into the Xbox One version of the game. On sign-in, we would move “private” files to the local Xbox One device, and “public” files would be moved to our new cloud storage.
However, this means if you have *only* ever played MCC on PC since that update (December 2019) you have not had your old Xbox One UGC, if any, migrated.
If you think you have UGC content you made on the Xbox One version of the game before the December 2019 update last year, we are encouraging you to login once on an Xbox One version of the game soon, as we will be deprecating this one-time migration process in November of this year.Game Films and Mid Mission ProgressWith Halo 3: ODST coming to PC and the next game patch we want to remind players that films for some games will become corrupt or unwatchable after September 22nd. You will still be able to play and create new ones though! If you have missions to complete or gameplay you want to make sure you have for later, the time is now to capture that theater film or complete those missions prior to the update next week.
Games with Affected Films: - Halo 2: Anniversary (Xbox, Microsoft Store, Steam)
- Halo 3 (Xbox, Microsoft Store, Steam)
- Halo 3: ODST (Microsoft Store, Steam)
Games with Films NOT Affected: - Halo: Reach (Xbox, Microsoft Store, Steam)
- Halo 4 (Xbox)
Additionally, as with our previous updates, mid-mission progress for campaign and playlists may also be affected.
We will see you on the other side of Halo 3: ODST’s launch - just a few short days left before we’re live! As always, thank you for stopping by and we will see y’all online.
Cheers,
Postums
