Halo: The Master Chief Collection's matchmaking has not worked properly since launch, and its long load times and session issues have been gradually patched with a series of updates.
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We heard earlier this week that another patch would be coming, and it arrived on players' systems last night. The preview said the update would focus on matchmaking flow, and now we can see the specifics from the official patch notes. Unfortunately, fixing the team balancing issue will come as part of the next update.
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What we did get, however, is a series of specific fixes and general improvements aimed at both the servers and the game's UI. Here are the changes:
- Made a change to allow for matches to start once minimum player counts are met, allowing for faster matching times.
- Made an update to resolve issues that caused false matches to be created, which resulted in a variety of matchmaking issues, including slow matchmaking and bad session starts.
- Streamlined the process for maintaining party continuity through the matchmaking process.
- Made an update to the high-level matchmaking flow that will reset lobbies after each match. Moving forward, players and party leaders need to press "B" after the post-game-carnage report, and select a playlist for their next match. This flow is consistent with previous Halo titles.
- Improved user experience through removal of non-actionable error messages. This will allow for a more seamless matchmaking flow with less interruption and confusion.
- Improved the post-game experience to fix an issue that could result in a player getting sent to another player's lobby, rather than returning to the matchmaking screen.
The UI changes were obvious in-game, though it may take a day for everyone to update to see if the matchmaking speed has improved. The false matches and party continuity are big fixes, however, and with matchmaking speed improved, the team balancing issue is the next major problem to address. Games will way too often be five on four or four on three, which ruins most matches (especially objective gametypes) out of the gate.
