Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Our latest update to MCC went live yesterday morning and brought some surprises along with it. Last year's Yapyap takeover of Halo Wars 2 was so much fun that we knew we had to do it again. This time however, we wanted to go bigger and better with MCC. And that wasn't all,we added several highly requested features with this update. Let's take a look!

New Loading Screen

Our new and improved loading screen is easily one of my favorite additions with the Yappening update. In addition to calling out the map's name, it now also includes the following:

Primary weapon

Time limit

Score to win

Gamertags

Loading states (configuring, connecting, joining, validating, and loading)

Location of the data center hosting the match

Game type and description

Tips related to what you are playing

"What about Campaign and Spartan Ops loading screens?" I'm so glad you asked! Those were also given a nice refresh, both of which now allow you to see more information when loading in:

Mission name

Difficulty

Skulls turned on

Gamertags in session

Game type and description

Loading states

Tips related to what you are playing

The Yappening

It's definitely hard to miss our brand new splash screen and main menu background. We wanted to ensure Yapyap's prescence was known and felt in the game, as he truly is a one-of-a-kind Grunt, so we did our best to incorporate him in a fun and unique way.

We've also launched a special preset in Social Games which contains whacky modes like Methane Moshpit, Yappening Wargames, Brute Shoot, Yapyap’s Ball Grab, and Beamish Bonanza. I played a few games last night and couldn't help but laugh while playing due to the absolute ridiculousness of the game types.

Additionally, there are two new Yappening-themed nameplates you can earn by completing the unlock criteria by 10am PT on April 24.

Nameplate: Yapyap THE DESTROYER

Participate in Yapyap’s Grunt Rebellion to unlock.

Unlock Criteria: Complete seven Social matches using the Game Category “The Yappening” in Game Size 4v4 and/or 8v8

Nameplate: Shut Your Yap

Revolt against Yapyap’s Grunt Rebellion to unlock.

Unlock Criteria: Headshot 250 Grunts on Heroic or higher in Campaign and/or Spartan Ops

60hz

One final change I want to call out in this update is that we've improved how your Xbox talks to our servers. Dana "Psycho Duck" Jerpbak from the MCC Team broke down how it works in yesterday's blog, but it's worth sharing part of his quote here as well.

We’ve upgraded the rate at which network packets are sent by the server in Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 4, and Halo 2A. We have also increased limits on how much data each individual packet can contain. This includes data about the position of bipeds, where they’re aiming, what projectiles they’re firing, etc. The server prioritizes what data is contained in a packet until it reaches a maximum size. In gaps where the client hasn’t received a certain type of information from the server (due to latency or prioritization), the client predicts what this information should be based on the last data received. It then corrects its predictions upon receiving new data. This can result in cases of “rubber-banding” where a biped’s position is predicted locally and then corrected by the server. By increasing the allowed size of packets as well as their frequency, we have significantly reduced these gaps. This results in less prediction and correction due to more frequent and more complete updates from the server. In Halo 3, the clients would send 15 packets per second to the server, while the server would send 30 packets per second to all clients. Now both servers and clients will be networking at 60 packets per second, aligning with the framerate.

Packets transfers between clients and servers are dependent on the network quality and topology. As such, there will still be cases where rubber-banding and other network artifacts occur in cases of high ping or packet loss. However, the increased send rates should generally result in an overall smoother online experience. This improvement affects dedicated servers as well as peer servers in peer-to-peer matches.

After extensive internal testing and external flighting, we are confident this will positively impact the online experience in cases of good and poor connections. Please feel free to take time to share with us your experiences in matchmaking once you have tried out these changes in our Pinned Feedback Thread. As always, let us know! We love to hear from you and look forward to finding ways to continue to improve the experiences for everyone in game.

To read more about this change and see all of our patch notes, head over to the Yappening update post!