MCC Insider Flight 2 Recap

Key Takeaways & Learnings

Thanks Jessie! And thank you again to all our MCC Insiders who took the official survey and provided critical feedback to help the team!

This latest MCC flight helped the team learn a lot about the work they’ve been doing to the game itself as well as the work we continue to do around running a public flight. Here are some of the key takeaways the team has been discussing following the flight:

• Engagement – One the one hand, players overall responded positively to the meta game we added during this flight that rewarded any players who happened to match with a 343 employee with a special Halo Waypoint avatar and badge along with a weapon skin in Halo 5. On the other hand, despite having nearly 2x the player audience than flight #1 and offering more variety over the course of the flight (which participants specifically asked for), participation was lower than expected and didn’t really mirror the level of engagement we saw during flight #1.

As we work on future flights and larger content packages/increased scope, we’re continuing to review player feedback and explore ways to keep players engaged and incentivized to play across every facet of the flight. We need the support and participation of the community – please share your input and vote with your play time – if you choose not to play, then you’ve effectively given up your right to complain later and you’ve denied someone else who does care the opportunity to make a real impact. We’ve still got work to do, if you signed up, please help us (or, no hard feelings at all, you can opt-out).

• Pre Flight” Early Access – While the official flight session didn’t begin until Thursday, the build was actually available beginning on Monday. Though the population was small, we had enough players engaged in those early days to help identify an issue and ultimately improve the experience for everyone by the time things really kicked off. In general, the idea of a ‘soft launch’ a few days prior to make sure everything is working and getting in front of any issues proved to be incredibly helpful. The team is planning a similar cadence for the next flight as well. We also decided to leave the build "on" and leave the lights on following the final official flight session on Saturday. The population dropped dramatically but a few hardcore folks continued to play Halo 2 classic and we've gotten some great additional insights and feedback in new areas thanks to that effort!

• Latency & Connection Difficulties – Some players reported difficulties connecting to games during the flight. In one instance, an issue was found early that was causing connection issues for players in North America who had their default language set to something other than English. This was quickly addressed in a new build that was deployed prior to the first official flight. If not for the early access “pre-flight” play time, we wouldn’t have been able to address this in time for the official tests.

  Given the lower than desired population, particularly outside of North America, it’s expected that the folks who did try to play in those regions had a difficult time finding a game (if at all). We also had only a fraction of the data centers setup for the flight so there were some real regional limitations that unfortunately led to some of you having a not-great experience. And to the one lone person who participated in Asia – thank you, and we’re sorry – Asia wasn’t officially supported and there were no dedicated servers or other players in your region to match with so it's understanable that you had a rough go of things.

• Lack of Skill / Party Matching – Another area we’ve heard a lot about is the overall lack of skill-based matchmaking and the lack of any matchmaking logic that helped to curb solo players matching against full parties. Given that our population was so low for this flight, those systems and parameters were disabled to just make sure as many people as possible could successfully match and play. We heard similar feedback for flight #1 - many of us were on the receiving end of many an ass-whooping. We did course-correct for Saturday of Flight #2 by changing the playlists to feature "Action Sack" as a destination for those who were less competitively-oriented and "Team Doubles" for players who wanted to get as sweaty as possible. This is definitely an area the team will keep thinking about as we grow the flight program and we'll be looking to re-enable skill and party matchmaking systems as soon as we feel the population numbers can handle those extra hoops.

• Shot Registration – While we did get a lot of good feedback that many players felt that Halo 3’s shot registration felt improved over the current retail MCC, it’s still an area the team will continue to monitor.

• Poor Sportsmanship – Perhaps it was naïve to think that after such a great, positive first flight, that we’d double the population and have an even greater, more positive experience in flight #2. Truth is, some people seemed to make it their mission to harass and grief teammates throughout the flight. A few of those people were already removed from the program and going forward we won’t hesitate to permanently remove others who also make it their mission to just ruin the experience for everyone else. We're also looking into dusting off the banhammer tools and having it at the ready for future flights.That said, I’d like to say that I had an incredible time playing Halo 3 Big Team Battle all night on Friday and to everyone we played with and against – GGs my friends. What an awesome night that was!

• Spawns – The team is also tracking some feedback around reports of some spawns being broken or not working as expected on a variety of maps. We believe this was traced back to a matter of using some incorrect map setups when the playlists were created but it’s definitely an area the team is continuing to look into.

• Removal of Confidentiality Restrictions - Based on feedback from the first flight, we opted to lift the confidentiality restrictions for flight #2 to better facilitate feedback and the flow of information between the team and MCC Insiders. Many of you also decided to stream your Halo 3 exploits which was great fun to watch and participate in. Going forward, we expect a similar level of open-ness for future flights. It's great to see survey results echoing this positive response to loosening the confidentiality restrictions! (though I could personally do without screenshots of myself getting pwned or some very cringe-worthy post-game-carnage-reports)

Special Thanks - Over Achievers

We appreciate everyone who took the time to play and provide feedback but as always there were a few individuals who really rose to the occasion and blew us away with their commitment and passion. To these all-star over-achievers, an extra big double dose of THANK YOU!

Who played the most total games across the three official days of flight #2? These five folks did!

1. Halo Pro
2. xsv
3. FRiCTiON just
4. Fishmvn
5. Luminously

This time around we left the flight active the entire time (in fact it’s still technically active now!) so we had a number of people who just kept on playing well beyond the mere three days we asked for. Here are the heroes who played the most games total across the entire build from 6/5 through 6/14:

1. GregoR
2. FRiCTiON just
3. xsv
4. Clutchy
5. Fishmvn

In terms of overall wins, both during the three official sessions and across the duration of the flight build, that honor goes to GregoR!

Most kills across the entire flight? That honor goes to xsv!

And if I had to guess - the player who was on the receiving end of the most "celebratory crouches" - me!

Lastly, we’d also like to acknowledge the several hundred players who managed to match with or against members of the 343 team to earn some special rewards. We hope you enjoyed this additional activity and we’d love to hear your ideas and thoughts for similar meta games and fun engagement programs we could weave into future flights!

Next Flight

Right now, the team is hard at work on wrapping up a number of milestones and getting ever closer to the release of the first official update for MCC (which by the way, was officially confirmed to be coming to Game Pass later this year!). But, before that happens, we’re going to have more features and content that needs community testing and input.

If you were in flight #2, you may or may not already know that the build is actually still alive and functioning. Naturally, the population has diminished significantly but if you’d like to play a bit of classic Halo 2, it’s there for you, complete with a fresh FEEDBACK THREAD.

Exact details for flight #3 are still being finalized but the current target plan is that the next flight will essentially include the entirety of MCC and be opened to everyone in the MCC Insider Program to participate. We know many of you have been eagerly awaiting your chance to get hands-on and we’re happy to confirm that your time is nearly here. We’ll have more details as soon as things are locked but rest assured that we’re looking to go much bigger in scope and participation for round three and beyond.

Thanks again to everyone who supported this flight and to everyone who’s shared feedback, ideas, and input to help our team make MCC the best Halo experience it can be! And regardless of whether we’re in the midst of an active flight or not, your feedback is always welcomed!