Community Mailbag
Last month, the community got a special treat with ske7ch digging into and answering the plethora of questions y’all had. This month we are continuing this by once again digging into some topics that folks have been curious about.
Xavier Lang: Will we see more rewards for playing ranked playlists? I think it's a great incentive to encourage players to explore other playlists. Have you thought about nameplates and emblems for reaching 50s?
Postums: The short answer is Yes. We talked a little bit about some of these ideas back in the MCC Development Update for September about some of the planned incentives for players reaching higher ranks. I also have been having discussions with the team for potential opportunities here in the future. The team plans to continue having incentives and rewards for players who reach certain ranks in Ranked multiplayer. Players who have put in the time and effort to reach higher ranks do deserve to stand out amongst other Halo players for their achievements. As we make plans for future ranked rewards and unique content for those rewards, we will make sure to discuss and share them with the community.
Dana: With MCC, we’re getting to a place where we have a lot of rewards. We’re committed to keeping the bulk of these rewards available to all players without time restrictions. The vast majority of our rewards are present within seasons which remain available even after the subsequent season rotates in. Allowing players to earn the season points to unlock these rewards in the Halo game(s) and mode(s) they prefer and to do so at their own pace is important to us. However, we also have a (much smaller) subset of rewards which are more contextual. These are generally time-bound and include anything from the Cartographer nameplate (for creating a forge map which enters matchmaking rotation) to Season 3’s Endure challenge rewards, to ranked rewards. It’s important that we provide a balance of unique rewards for players to strive for in addition to the core rewards that are much easier to obtain.
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Using Season 4 as an example, we set out 16 Halo 4 weapon skins to include within the season tiers. Then we created two additional skins to tie to the featured ranked playlist. These rewards weren’t taken away from the core season but rather were purely additional. These skins serve to provide bragging rights for players who reach tiered milestones in the Squad Battle playlist and create an incentive for players to dip their toes in a part of the game they might not otherwise try. If you give it a shot and determine it’s not for you, no problem – there are many other unlocks to pursue as described above. Ranked playlists have tighter restrictions on the team size and skill level of who you match against which can lead to long search times. The extra incentives provide a boost to the playlist’s population which helps to mitigate this. Rewarding players’ accomplishments across MCC is important and ranked is certainly no exception. We’ll continue to refine both our approach to unlocks, and to ranked matchmaking in general, in the future.
Moot: Will 4 player campaign co-op be considered for Halo 1 & 2? That can bring new life to it.
Postums: I absolutely love this idea, but in the grand scope of body of work in the teams backlog of need to do and want to do, this one is further down the list. Cracking open the old games to make this an official feature is about as big of a 10 as possible on the complexity scale. Now, that’s not saying it can’t be done, but in terms of effort to impact ratio, I think it’s not as far up there as updating the old co-op netcode, or bringing long lost content to the games, or even making other global upgrades with collection wide updates. In the future however, I would not be surprised in the least bit if players are able to mod the game content to make this a reality on PC. In the future when major development support for MCC ends up winding down, the modding community will be where MCC lives on. I know this to be true as we have seen many games on PC take on new forms and longer lifetimes for decades now through communities that mod.
Scoops: H1 Remastered’s co-op code is very much hard coded around there only being up to 2 players (or at least the networking parts of it). So to allow for 3 or 4 co-op players, that would have to be solved for and debugged first.
Then you have to solve for the content changes. If I recall, the 2nd player spawns in the cryotube to right of the 1st player. But where would the others? Who are these two new mysterious Spartans? Flash clones of John 117? So more player spawn points would have to be added and verified. Plus other scripting related updates. Which runs the risk of inadvertently impacting existing behavior. Speaking of existing behavior, there’s also the design question of what that means for difficulty. H1 was built with 2 players in mind, but what happens with more? Is the game now easier? Are there enough resources for all players? Eg, sniper rifle ammo on T&R. What about vehicles? AoTCR has that over turned Warthog, but that sits three people.
H2’s existing code is probably more at-the-ready for possibly going to 4 co-op players. However, you still have the same content changes/issues as H1.
Both H1 and H2 probably also have load time issues to work out if two additional players (and machines) were added to the mix.
MrTekhnical: Did 343i add the GRD Helmet and other cut armor into Halo Reach in today's update?
Postums: No unfortunately, we did not. While it was something, we had originally planned to release with the Halo 4 update, it was not yet ready. There are a number of things that have just taken more time to bake and have work completed on them to bring it into MCC. We are currently planning for it to come into MCC in a future update and will make sure to sound the alarm when it is something players can work towards unlocking.
Dana: The AKIS and Mariner helmets which players know from some infamous screenshots of the Defiant Map Pack were not included in Season 4. To implement this content, we had to resurrect some old art pipelines to create and implement these assets in Halo: Reach. This process was complicated given that Halo: Reach was released over ten years ago and this work required use of some old versions of various tools. Due to these complexities, these armors did not meet our quality bar in time for the launch of Halo 4. However, we’ve made some great progress internally and are happy to confirm that they will be coming in Season 5! You’ll likely hear more about Season 5 soon.
Lollo big1915: Mind anyone explaining how this crossplay works? all playlist or no? Only infection?
Postums: Crossplay is a new feature that has been added to Halo: The Master Chief Collection for both players that are using a Xbox One console or are playing on PC. Regardless of where you have purchased the game or are receiving it via a subscription, you can log in and play with players on any platform in multiplayer games. This includes Matchmaking, Custom game lobbies, Forge, and Firefight.
Campaign game modes are not currently supported for crossplay, but it is something the team is interested in and will continue to investigate potential ways to make that happen. But this is by no means a confirmation that it could happen. Digging into the code we have found some things that just cannot be done with current architecture of these games that are nearly 20 years old. But even that said, we tend to look down the rabbit holes to see if we can.
Dana: As of Halo 4’s PC launch, crossplay between Xbox and PC is available for Multiplayer, Firefight, and Forge across MCC. Crossplay is open to anyone, regardless of whether you’re on Steam, Windows Store, or any type of Xbox console. You may not even realize it, but you’ve likely played a number of matches with players on mixed platforms since it was added.
By default, you’ll matchmake with anyone else regardless of platform or input device. However, some playlists allow you to further restrict your search preference to others on the same platform and / or using the same input device. These are indicated by the “User Input / Platform Restrictions” field in the Playlist Stats pane before and while searching. You can set your preference on whether to match only on the same platform and / or only with the same input device in the Network Settings menu.
Crossplay is not currently supported in Campaign (including Campaign Playlists) and Spartan Ops. This is due to these modes using a synchronous network model which is significantly less forgiving to disparities in hardware between users. We’ll continue to investigate the potential of campaign crossplay in the future, but don’t have anything to confirm at this time.
KMIC88: Does anybody know if there are any plans to allow the machinima controls to come to PC? I'd love to be able to create some machinimas or get better footage for my videos, but it just doesn't seem that accessible unless I get a new controller.
Postums: This is something I’ve seen pop up as a question from time to time. This generally accompanies requests for all armors to be unlocked for guests so it is easier to make machinimas as well. It is something that has been considered and I believe is in the team’s backlog, but not something we are currently working on. Maybe at some point further down the road, but currently it is not a planned addition.
Dana: We don’t currently have plans to support Machinima controls on mouse & keyboard given the complexities of supporting rebindable keys across seven game engines. Theater is the primary destination for this sort of thing in the games which support it. However, that isn’t to say that we couldn’t revisit Machinima controls down the road if enough people want it. Updating MCC is a constant balancing act which requires us to prioritize work which the most players will benefit from and enjoy. Investing resources in one area can preclude doing so in another. Thank you for bringing it up!
u/SkeleToasty: After updating MCC on steam and finally booting up the now completed Halo Collection I noticed that no matter what I do the text chat and voice chat does not work. The buttons I have set up will not do anything and neither will the defaults. Anyone else? This is really bad.
Postums: There seems to be a lot of confusion around this as some things with settings for text chat and voice chat defaults. Previously when entering the game these were both on by default. With the most recent update, the setting has been changed so these are more limited by default.
To change these, you will need to go into your settings and make some adjustments. You will need to go through the following menus to make the necessary changes.
Voice Settings:
- Open “Options & Career”
- Open “Settings”
- Tab over to “Audio”
- Set your Voice Chat Channel & Push to Talk Voice Chat settings
Chat Settings:
- Open “Options & Career”
- Open “Settings”
- Tab over to “Accessibility”
- Set your Text Chat Availability settings
For these settings, it will determine who you can talk to and hear for both text and voice. Setting it to “Squad” means the players in your fireteam are the only ones. Setting it to “Team” means players on your team are the ones you can communicate with. By setting it to all means everyone in the lobby and game you are connected to.
If you haven’t yet picked up Halo: The Master Chief Collection, there are now more ways than ever to experience the iconic classics of Halo. The game is playable on all Xbox One consoles and is even enhanced for the Xbox Series X|S. If you prefer playing on PC, you have the options of playing it through Xbox Game Pass for PC or purchasing it on the Microsoft Store or Steam. For a full breakdown of purchase options, head over to 
Field of View adjustment for Xbox Series X|S consoles
