Halo: The Master Chief Collection Content Updates (2014-2015)
From Halopedia, the Halo wiki
This page lists all Title Updates released by 343 Industries for Halo: The Master Chief Collection between 2014 and 2015. Due to the game's buggy nature at launch, these patches were mostly aimed at bringing the game into a workable state, though due to the amount of work and the game's codebase, no further patches were rolled out for the game following 2015. With the launch of the Xbox One X in 2017, 343 Industries planned to do a 4K update for the game, and ultimately decided to do a total overhaul of the game and provide ongoing support.
Due to the "phased" nature of Master Chief Collection updates, only the initial rollout of 2014-2015 updates are listed on this page. To see the updates done between 2018 and 2019 as part of the "#FixMCC" project, see here. To see the patch notes for the individual updates and seasons following the game's launch on PC and the addition of Halo: Reach to the collection, please see each Season's individual article (listed at the bottom of this page).
November Content Update (General)[edit]
Released on November 14, 2014, this Content Update focused on campaign, UI, and some Matchmaking and party issues. Performance focused Matchmaking updates were addressed in another content update the following week.[1]
List of Changes[edit]
- Fixed a variety of issues that caused players within the same Matchmaking party to be placed on different teams. In rare cases, this issue may still occur, and we are investigating additional fixes.
- Fixed a Matchmaking issue with behind the scenes team skill matching, allowing team skill matching to be more accurate in both ranked and unranked playlists.
- Fixed an issue where the campaign HUD did not reset from level to level with scoring or time HUD enabled. This will clear out the full visualization of level segments, which was previously not reset.
- Fixed a variety of issues with campaign leaderboards and scoring HUD, so now when scores are posted, score, kills, time, deaths, and penalties will be reported correctly for new mission leaderboard entries. We are still working on additional fixes for playlist leaderboard entries.
- Fixed an issue with competitive HUD time split. Now, when players have competitive time HUDs on with a rival set, they will see per-segment split times for whether they are ahead or behind at each segment.
November Content Update (Matchmaking)[edit]
Released on November 20, 2014, this Content Update addressed matchmaking performance, UI, gameplay, and title-specific issues.[2] This update was released in response to complaints regarding poor matchmaking times and overall bad multiplayer experiences.[3]
List of Changes[edit]
Matchmaking
- Addressed a number of issues that resulted in extended matchmaking times and low matchmaking success rates.
- Made a number of updates to how matchmaking progress is communicated to the player. With this update, you’ll see better, more frequent and more informative status updates throughout the matchmaking flow – so “Players Found” for example, will be displayed to let players know where they are in the matchmaking process instead of simply wondering if it’s going to connect.
- The improved matchmaking flow is as follows:
- Searching
- Searching for more players
- Players found
- Finalizing matchmaking process
- Connecting session
- Made an update to ensure that parties stick together when returning from the post-game carnage report
- Prevented the ability for players “kick” other players from matchmaking games
- Made an update to ensure that the Roster correctly displays the “searching” UI rather than “My Game Session” while searching for players
- Removed the possibility to boost ranking through a custom games exploit
- Made an update to ensure that players cannot get stuck in the matchmaking screen during map voting
- Made an update to ensure that the “Connecting to your game” message no longer incorrectly displays in the lower right of the screen during gameplay
- Made an update to the “team creation” phase that allows players to be grouped by team
- Made an update to prevent players from seeing the “connection failed” dialogue if disconnected during the map voting screen
- Improved roster / matchmaking lobby stability
- Made improvements to the accuracy and stability of the “Game Session Details” UI
- Improved version compatibility
UI
- Improved emblem and nameplate behavior to ensure that they do not reset to default (especially after game sessions)
- Corrected career stats that did not update uniformly across different profiles in multiple titles
- Improved Forge map display names in Theater
- Corrected various medal inconsistencies across titles
Campaign
- Made updates to the attainability of various achievements, including “Goat Roped,” “Monopolized,” “You’re Joking,” and “Devastating.”
- Improved Halo: CE career stat tracking
- Resolved scoring and time HUD reset and display issues
- Made an update to ensure that rival emblems are displayed correctly
Halo: CE
- Improved consistency and reliability of shot registration
- Improved headshot hitboxes
- Fixed an issue where respawning players could momentarily appear at their death location
- Made an update to ensure that the match ends when the entire opposing team quits
- Improved fall damage consistency (specifically in regards to uneven surfaces)
- Improved Halo: CE menu and loading screen stability
- Improved consistency with multikill rewards
- Made an update to improve post-game carnage report accuracy for Halo: CE FFA games
- Updated default language settings
Halo 2
- Made an update to ensure that the team color shown in pre-game lobby matches in-game
- Improved a variety of networking issues to allow for improved consistency between host and clients in peer to peer matches
- Improved a variety of networking issues to allow for improved gameplay consistency
- Made an update to service tag functionality, allowing for service tags to appear for all players
- Improved the post-game carnage report to correctly display team color
- Made an update to ensure that the match ends when the entire opposing team quits
- Improved “original” medal icon functionality in split-screen
- Improved host migration functionality
- Corrected “headshot” stat tracking
- Addressed a crash that occurred with the Scarab skull
- Addressed art errors that occurred on the opening cinematics for “Uprising” and “High Charity”
Halo 2: Anniversary
- Made an update to prevent players from gaining achievements in Forge
- Improved Forge item display names
- Resolved text overlapping issues
- Improved split screen stability
- Made an update to resolve the notorious “-1th” scoreboard text
- Improved lobby functionality to address players not being able to reconnect to the party leader after completing a match
- Improved host migration functionality
- Corrected vehicle and weapon thumbnails in the “Tools of destruction” table in the post-game carnage report
- Addressed a dedicated server issue that caused gameplay physics issues on Stonetown
- Improved split-screen party functionality to ensure that players are not directed to a broken lobby screen after completing a game session
- Improved Forge mode stability
- Made an update to King of the Hill scoring to prevent multiple hills from counting down at the same time
- Improved Shrine objective spawn points
- Improved King of the Hill and Ninjanaut mode stability
- Addressed an issue where controller vibration could persist during the pause menu
- Improved Race mode respawn zones
November Content Update (Final)[edit]
Released on November 26, 2014, this Content Update focused on addressing a number of matchmaking issues, fixing various bugs related to UI and the party system, and also improving overall stability. The download was 523 MB.[4]
List of Changes[edit]
Matchmaking
- Made improvements to the way the matchmaking system handles player matching
- Made improvements to the team selection process to improve team balancing
- Made an update to the party system to improve searching with parties (2+ players)
- Made further improvements to how matchmaking progress is communicated to the player
- Made an update to ensure that players do not enter a non-joinable state after searching for a match
- Made an update to ensure that the “Game Session” UI does not persist after leaving a matchmaking lobby
- Resolved a variety of incorrectly displayed matchmaking prompts
- Improved matchmaking roster presentation during team creation phase to remove roster flickering
- Corrected a “connecting to host” message that incorrectly displayed during the matchmaking searching phase
- Made an update to ensure that FFA players do not appear as if they are on the red team in the pre-game lobby
Party, Lobby, and Custom Games
- Made an update to ensure that custom game settings persist between matches
- Made an update to ensure that player’s player emblems load correctly when returning to lobby
- Made an update to improve nameplate and emblem display
- Improved the display of emblems in the “Games Session Details” screen
- Made improvements to parties to ensure that parties are merged when the host joins another player and “brings party”
- Made an update to improve party stability after completing a matchmaking game
- Made an update to ensure that players are joinable after playing a matchmaking game
Stability
- Made a variety of updates to improve UI stability
- Resolved stability issues that occurred while viewing medals in “Player Details”
- Made an update to prevent stability issues caused by controller disconnects
- Made an update to improve post-game-carnage-report stability
- Made an update to address in-game stability for Halo 2
- Improved matchmaking stability while searching with parties (2