[Locked] MCC Development & Flighting Updates

Hey Friends,

This is going to be our last Friday & Development Update for the year and will be a brief one as this past week has not been shy for new news relating to MCC. If you haven’t seen it yet, this week we dropped the MCC Development Update for December on Tuesday of this week. For all your latest development need to knows, you will definitely want to check it out. We also had a Community Update go out yesterday covering everything Halo. Also a fantastic holiday Spotlight where we gathered some of the amazing community art and creations from across the interwebs. A big piece of news that is also very noteworthy was last week’s Halo Infinite deep dive. You can check that bountiful blog in the Inside Infinite update and catch up on it as well.

Needless to say, we’ve been busy this week, month, and year! If you haven’t checked them out, make sure to. A LOT of awesome in each one for sure. For everything MCC, we will be back in January with news, our Friday updates, and will be sure to share what the future holds!

Happy Holidays everyone, and as always – we will see y’all online!

Cheers,
Postums

Hey Friends,

It’s that day again and we are back with another Friday Development & Flighting Update. Today we will be talking through a couple of development pieces that are coming down the pipe. As a gentle reminder, there is no new flighting news, but we will be continuing flighting this year for MCC. If you haven’t already registered or updated your Halo Insider profile recently, make sure to get in on the action. More news will come for flighting in the future. Let’s dive on into today’s new details!

Halo 3 Cosmetic Toggle
In our last game update for MCC, new content was added ahead of Season 5 which included several new armors for Halo 3. As images of these armors circulated online, we read feedback from players in the community wanting an option to “turn off” these new armors to maintain a classic legacy experience (similar to how weapon skins operate in MCC today).

We heard you and are happy to report that this feature is coming to MCC.

The team is currently working on a game update that expands the existing skin toggle in the settings menu to also apply to armor. If you prefer a true classic experience, you’ll be able to flip the “New Skins in Halo 3” toggle to “disabled” and you won’t see any new cosmetic items (weapon skins, vehicle skins, or armor) when you’re playing Halo 3. If you decide to turn off cosmetics, any players in your game who are wearing new armor will appear as default Mark VI.

Thank you for the continued feedback and discussions around balancing the original legacy experiences in these games with a desire to add fun, new, unexpected cosmetics. Once again, we’re grateful to be able to partner with our players to make your MCC experiences even better.

Matchmaking Ranked Update
Next Wednesday, January 20, Halo 2 Classic Team Hardcore will be rotating out and Halo: Reach Team Hardcore will be rotating in. As a part of this change, we will be including an updated map. Specifically, the Pit remake from the map variant of Forge World, made by, “Just SaLoT,” has been rebuilt using the map variant Tempest, made by, “runNOKYARDrun.”

Halo: Reach’s playlist map pools include many different ones created in Forge. With this change, we aim to break up the similar look of many maps that use the same color palettes. In a nutshell, it takes advantage of our “Thorage” update and breathes some life into the map by moving away from the traditionally grey aesthetics. It has also allowed us to fix various geometry issues present in the original. We hope you enjoy it and do not hesitate to reach out in our feedback threads to share your thoughts!

Thanks for stopping in and getting caught up on the latest and greatest! We will catch y’all back here next week, and as always, we will see you online!

Cheers,
Postums

Hey Friends,

Welcome back to another Friday Development Update. In cased you missed it, Season 5 rolled out earlier this week and is live for the next couple of months. If you want to learn more about it, we have the Go Live blog HERE, the Trailer for it HERE, and the all new Seasonal Sitrep series video HERE. For the lore lovers, we also have a new Canon Fodder you can check out HERE covering all of the new armors added in with Season 5. Let’s jump on into the flighting update portion for today.

Future Flights
Flighting conversations have been ongoing for some time with testing of various pieces of the next new offerings coming in future flights already going through Ring 1. We are still a bit off from locking in on when the go-live date for our next flight and its plethora of pieces. I know players are chomping at the bit for news on it, but we should be in great shape to start talking about it next month. Please stay tuned and patient for more details. They are coming!
Also, I would be remiss if I did not ask, are you already a Halo Insider? Sweet! Please make sure your profile is current. This includes if you have picked up an Xbox One Series S|X recently or new parts for your PC. Verifying your email address and making sure it's up-to-date is the only way we can contact you when the time comes to send out flighting invites.
Not yet a Halo Insider? No problem! It’s quick and easy to opt-in – just head HERE and enter your info. Make sure to opt-in for communications and complete your email verification. And, if you want to participate via PC, please make sure to include a DXDIAG hardware snapshot.
Let’s get after it Spartans and dive into the bulk of today’s development update to talk about the quite challenging challenge just a few players have been discussing since Anvil rolled out earlier this week!

You Begged for it…
Since players found out Halo: Reach was coming to MCC in 2019, there was talk about bringing the Achievement “If They Came to Hear Me Beg” coming to MCC with it. But behind closed doors in the studio, we also talked quite a bit about it because of the difficulty around it. With Season 5, we brought this achievement back in the form of the Seasonal Challenge “Because You Begged.”

Watching social media, forums, and feedback threads light up since it became available has been crazy to watch in real time. Players completing it, players not able to, various theories of the best way, map, and some even calling it out as being impossible to complete.
To summarize, you all might be right.

In the first 24 hours, we saw it be the most attempted Challenge amongst the seasonal ones by a large margin. To date, thousands of people have successfully earned this challenge, but we’ve also heard from a number of players who haven’t had success and feel they may be encountering an underlying issue in completing it.
Right now, our teams have heard various troubleshooting techniques the community has been doing to obtain it and are investigating what may be the cause of some of these failed attempts.

For players who are encountering troubles, we would suggest holding out on continuing to bang your Spartans head against those pesky Elites and let us investigate. Until we truly know what is going on, we would hate for you to waste time and instead have some fun working on other Season 5 content. The challenge will be available for the next few months, so please let us dig in and figure out what is going on for now. When we know what’s going on, we will get on the horn and let y’all know!
Also, to hint at some future things that are cooking up, the team already has some cool plans to expand the ways in which players can acquire customization items, including previous expired challenge offerings from past seasons that have proven to be too difficult to obtain. Stay tuned!

Story Time
Over this week digging into the story of “Because You Begged,” I was able to talk with some members of the Publishing Team and learned about some interesting stories around the history around it. So, let’s start this off with some technical backstory around this from one of my friends.

“In the original release of Halo: Reach, the achievement ‘If They Came to Hear Me Beg’ was put in as a very challenging achievement to acquire. It was both loved and loathed back then by many, because of the finicky mechanics of the achievement. Specifically, the validation code based on the physics calculations of the interaction.

Truth be told this achievement was one you were either extremely lucky and got it on the first time, or spent hours and hours attempting to master the technique necessary to acquire it.

Before that achievement saw the light of day, it was internally tested by both the Bungie and Microsoft teams. Feedback from the Test team was that the Achievement often looked like it was completed successfully but was not actually given credit.

One of the goals for the Product team was to try to make sure to try to minimize the scenarios where the player ever felt ‘cheated’ by the systems that were implemented. Unfortunately, due to the way the invisible physics pill around the player would interact with the collision of the Elite in conjunction with the speed the player needed to be travelling, often made the player fail to earn the achievement, although it looked like they ‘stuck’ the landing. These concerns were voiced, but this was as intended and by design. Therefore, the achievement stayed in and its functionality remained difficult.


For each release candidate, the Test team had to verify all achievements in the title functionality, and this achievement alone spent 30-man hours of time to verify across the different builds before release.

Flash forward to 2019, and achievements were being identified for bringing into MCC. This infamous achievement came into consideration, and due to the community reservations and the amount of time required to support it, it was decided to not formally support it with an achievement.

After release, there were posts, comments, and mentions of surprise, disappointment, and sadness about it not being in the title. As we implemented the challenge system, we saw an opportunity to bring back the original implementation, and award those who accomplished it with a worthy reward.
It came back ‘Because you Begged.’”

Thank you, friend!

This is continued in the next post below.

Hey Friends,

Welcome back to another MCC Weekly Flighting and Development Update! This week has been one of investigations, planning, bug fixing, and prep work for our next series of flights set to begin soon-ish. Topics for today’s update are as follows:

• Workaround for “Because You Begged.”
• February is Black History Month.
• HCS Halo 3 Weekly Tournaments back on Feb 14.
• Quit Bans and when you can quit PSA.
• Flighting Update

Let’s get after it!

Challenging Challenges
Last month, Season 5 rolled out and with it a whole slew of new Seasonal Challenges. One has been causing quite a bit of grief unfortunately. After taking some time to investigate it, we have found a bug. However, we also have found a work around with some community help that helped us identify where the bug lives.

If you have been having issues achieving the Mister Chief helmet for Halo: Reach from doing the “Because You Begged” Seasonal Challenge please head over to the Halo Support site and check out the workaround steps for both Xbox and PC HERE.

Long story short, anyone who had attempted the old achievement from Halo: Reach and successfully completed it, the logic for the achievement still lives in the game and it was marked as completed and saved in your profile’s data. Clearing that data through the work around, now makes it so when you complete it, the challenge can unlock appropriately.

Please follow the steps in the link above and we will see you all rocking out in the Mister Chief helmets soon enough! Thank you for your patience and we will let players know if there’s anything else we see possibly causing a ruckus with this one.

For some eager beavers however, this workaround won’t impact everyone’s issue. There is another one scenario when the Season was changing over, roughly 300 players unlocked it prior the game update on January 27th. For the select few who encountered this, we have completed a manual grant of the Mister Chief helmet today, so you suit up your Spartan proudly with the Mister Chief.

Black History Month Nameplate
When Season 5 rolled out, we talked about a new nameplate players can acquire in the month of February for Black History Month. The time is now Spartans! Hop into game anytime this month and you will unlock the Black History Nameplate.

HCS Events
Later this month, weekly Halo 3 tournaments will be making their way back into MCC. On February 14th, players can jump into the action for a shot at $1,000 if you can keep up. Full details and how to register can be found HERE.

Quit Ban PSA
If you’ve quit out of a game either intentionally or unintentionally, you will receive a quit ban if you are within the first 50% of players to quit from your team.
Current ban ladder for MCC:

• First offence: 1 minute ban
• Second offense: 3 minute ban
• Third offense: 5 minute ban
• Fourth offense: 10 minute ban
• Additional offences: 10 minutes

The “First 50%” means that if you are in a 4v4, that the first 2 players to quit on your team will receive a quit ban. However, after at least 50% quit, you are free to quit without a ban. There is a caveat where if a player doesn’t connect to the server and does not make it into the game, the automated quit ban service will not see them as ever being a part of the game. In that situation, the first 2 players to manually quit on that team will receive the ban.

Moral of the story: don’t quit, but if half of your team has then you won’t be punished for doing so.

Flighting Future
Later this month we are currently planning to kick off our next series of flights. We have quite a bit of new content we are looking to get into your hands, but we are deciding what the right amount is and are still waiting to see what progress is made in the coming weeks.

If all goes well, later this month or early next month is when we plan to roll out our next public flight. Some of the items we are hoping (things can change) to have make it into this flight are as follows:

• FOV slider support for all Xbox One consoles
• FOV slider will no longer be locked when Xbox Series S|X devices are set to 120hz
• Additional ways to customize controls
• Additional Keybindings
• Mouse & Keyboard Support for consoles
• View Model Adjustments
• And maybe a new place and way to play

As we get closer, we will start sharing more details of when and what players can expect for our next flight. For the time being, please make sure all of your Halo Insider information is accurate and current. This includes if you have picked up an Xbox One Series S|X recently or new parts for your PC. Verifying your email address and making sure it's up-to-date is the only way we can contact you when the time comes to send out flighting invites.

Not yet a Halo Insider? No problem! It’s quick and easy to opt-in – just head HERE and enter your info. Make sure to opt-in for communications and complete your email verification. And, if you want to participate via PC, please make sure to include a DXDIAG hardware snapshot.

With that, I must bid you a farewell and a happy Friday y’all! As always, thank you for stopping by, and we will see you online!

Cheers,
Postums

Hey Friends,

Welcome back to another MCC Development & Flighting Update. This week we are knee deep in preparation for flighting and an update on where things are at. One development update note is that next week, we are rotating in H2A Team Hardcore and rotating out Halo: Reach Team Hardcore. This will happen on Wednesday in our regularly scheduled playlist update. Now, onward to flighting news!

February Flighting
ICYMI – The Halo Community Update came out last week, and in it we talked to MCC flighting which we planned to have roll out this week. Unfortunately, there are a handful of Ring 3 blockers (bugs preventing public flighting) that are present. We are going to give this month’s flight another week of development prior to getting it out in front of everyone.

This is game development and things change. We will continue to do our best to keep you informed on these changes through our weekly flighting updates when we have news available to share.

So, our new target is later next week. We know that players are very excited for this flight and as we’ve discussed, there’s a lot of new features and content coming in the next one! Since last week’s update, we have made a minor shift of timing for the content in it and when it will be available over the course of it.

If all goes well in Rings 1 and 2, we plan to roll out our next public flight as early as next Thursday, February 25th. Then we are planning in roughly a week or so, an update to the flight to bring more content and features online that we are working hard on.

Some of the items we are hoping (things can change) to include in this flight at the start are:

• Season 6 content
• 2 new maps for Halo 3 from Halo Online (Edge and Waterfall)
• FOV slider support for all Xbox One consoles
• FOV slider will no longer be locked when Xbox Series X|S devices are set to 120hz
• Double Keybindings
• Mouse & Keyboard support for consoles
• Advanced Audio options
• Weapon Display Offsets for view model position customization options

Planned Update content a week or two after flighting starts:

• Custom Game Browser: a new way to play with each other in MCC
• Additional bug fixes and content.

Thanks for being flexible, patient, and ready for this next one to kick off! We will let you know as soon as we are good to go and shout it on the bull horn.

Halo Insider Registration
I know that this sounds like I’m beating a dead horse, but if you really want into flighting, it’s as simple as following the below steps to get into it.

Update Halo Insider Profile for Flighting
If you want to get in on the action, please make sure all of your Halo Insider information is accurate and current. This includes if you have picked up an Xbox One Series S|X recently or new parts for your PC. Verifying your email address and making sure it's up-to-date is the only way we can contact you when the time comes to send out flighting invites.
Not yet a Halo Insider? No problem! It’s quick and easy to opt-in – just head HERE and enter your info. Make sure to opt-in for communications and complete your email verification. And, if you want to participate via PC, please make sure to include a DXDIAG hardware snapshot.

Well, that’s it. But – before we go, here’s a nice new screenshot for Edge, another Halo Online map that is coming to Halo 3 in the next flight.

Halo Online's Edge

Oh, and another work-in-progress screenshot for Waterfall (that's me on the forklift).

Waterfall Screenshot

Thanks all for stopping in and we will work to let folks know as soon as things are ready, we’re strapped in, and ready to kick February’s flight off! Happy Friday all, and as always – we will see y’all online!

Cheers,
Postums

Hey Friends,

Welcome back to the latest edition of MCC’s Friday Development & Flighting Updates for February 26th, 2021. Today we have a light (but, information packed) flight and development update.

Flight is LIVE
Big news coming up first, flighting has kicked off for Ring 3 today! For those of you who are registered Halo Insiders, check your Waypoint messages for all the necessary details to get in on the action. We invited every Halo Insider this time based on your platform preferences, so make sure to check those inboxes. If you just recently registered, you may have missed the cutoff for this flight, but hang tight as there are more coming this year!

For this flight, there’s a lot of content and it’s all broken down in the flight overview - which will be linked to in your messages here on Halo Waypoint. To make sure you’re all caught up with the latest, be sure to give it a look to learn all about MCC’s February flight.

Custom Game Browser
On the development side, the long-awaited Custom Game Browser is coming in a future update to our current flight! (So long as the next week-or-so goes smoothly.)

With Custom Game Browser, we took time to listen to as much feedback as we could over the years of what players really wanted and brought in as much of that core functionality as we could. This means allowing for games to be played on dedicated servers and allowing players to effectively create your own playlists. These are referred to in-game as “variants” which allow you to create a custom selection of game modes and maps built with custom rotations and repeatable options.

We think players will be pleasantly surprised and quite happy with this tool’s feature set when it’s out in the wild. We are very excited to roll it out in the flight first for Halo: Reach and build on it and expand it to more games over time. It’s a very robust tool and over time will come online for all titles in MCC as we have to tinker with and customize it to “play nice” with all of the various game engines and file types each Halo uses. So, if you’re in this flight, please make sure to jump in and try it out! Help us figure out if there are any oddities or issues with this tool at scale with a large audience so we can smooth out any wrinkles it may have before it’s ready for primetime.

Custom Game Team Changing
With this flight, players will now be able to change teams while in-game during a custom game. This is a feature we are tracking to have functional across all games in MCC by the time Season 6 comes out and are curious to see how players interact with it during the flight, ae if there are any odd scenarios present. This is a big win for players who have been asking for this behavior to make its way back into the legacy Halo titles in MCC as it was present in the original releases. The most prominent example being players wanting to play Halo 2’s zombies and be able to change teams from Red to Green. This option will be available for both the Halo: Reach and Halo 3 content via the pause menu roster in the flight.

Alright, those are the big things for this week. We’ll check back in next week and see how everything is going in the flight and to discuss what we are hearing from players, what issues players are encountering, and talk about how the flight is going!

Thanks for stopping in, and as always, we will see y’all online!

Cheers,
Postums