Dear Bonnie,
In December I received a copy of the Master Chief Collection for my birthday. Having been an avid Halo fan since I was lucky enough to receive it bundled with an original Xbox way back in 2001, I was so excited to replay all the games I loved growing up. And I partly have…on my own. I convinced my friend to buy a copy so we could once again play Halo like we used to. But rather than on a small 14" TV, this time we could play over Xbox Live. Unfortunately that was, and still is a dream.
Normally I wouldn’t write a letter of complaint but I am so frustrated with my experience of this so-called “Flagship game” I feel like I have to. The game has been out for months now, and I am still yet to have a game that isn’t plagued by lag with my friends. Even co-op is made unplayable due to lag, something that I never experience with any other Xbox One title when playing online. Matchmaking? If I manage to get online I can forget being in a party with friends. Currently I am sat, and have been for at least 30 minutes or so now, facing a screen that says “Downloading Latest Data”. I’m trying to weigh up if anything is actually downloading, and if so how much data there is to download and how long this will take. There is no feedback at all. Being a User-Experience Designer myself, I must say that this is a pretty poor user experience. So I should just sit here and wait and wait with no idea how long I could be waiting for? Where’s my feedback? I digress.
I love Halo, and I love Xbox, and despite getting through at least 3 Xbox 360s due to them red-ringing, I stayed faithful and bought an Xbox One. However, this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. This is not the “next-gen experience” I was expecting or was sold. I know development is complicated, but your teams are meant to be experts, the top developers in the industry, working for the top computing company in the world on arguably the best multiplayer game ever made! What happened?! And why has it still not been fixed?
I hope I am not disappointed for much longer and I remain ever hopeful you can fix whatever problems are happening over there soon.
Yours sincerely,
Jonno W.
A.K.A KingTravis