Being old and not able to keep up with the 15 year-olds in matchmaking, myself and my friends traditionally stick with custom games (we at least have a chance at killing each other)
We’ve been playing Halo online since Halo 2 on the original Xbox and for me playing Halo online with mates are some of my fondest memories.
We were all (like most) bitterly disappointed with MCC on release and have been holding out hope for the “big patch”.
Tonight was the night we were to go back to Halo.
Here’s a list of the issues we encountered tonight.
12 people in the lobby, no-one could hear everyone and most could only hear half.- The first game we tried to play did not load and we were all met with a “Game Over” screen and no post carnage report, we were then all separated into our own lobbies. Chat then completely stopped working for some of us and we had to shutdown and restart MCC to get it back.- When we got back into a lobby, chat had slightly improved with most of us being able to hear most of us. Sadly that changed once the game started when most chat stopped working. On the plus side the game ran pretty smoothly (H2A)- We then tried to play Halo CE where the chat issues continued and the game lagged terribly- We gave up on chat and decided to split into two parties of 6, we then tried Halo 3 where the LAG continued. The game then froze and made a loud screeching noise before crashing back to the dashboard.- We then went to one party of 8 and had two relatively good games (H3 and H4).- The last couple of games of the night were in a H2A forge map where at one point part of the map did not load and we would just continuously fall to our death when spawning.- Then it froze again, made the screeching sound and crashed- Then we gave up
I should mention that we’re all in Australia, we all have decent connections (and considerably better than when we used to play previous generations Halos), we all hard-reset our consoles and routers before playing.
I’m assuming that most of 343’s recent efforts to fix this game are concentrated on matchmaking, the question is will the rest of the game ever be fixed?
For me and my friends Halo is all about customs and forge and it looks like we (and others like us) are getting left in the cold.
Agree wholeheartedly with this. Customs are the only way Halo appeals to me and all the guys I’ve been playing Halo with since Halo 2 days. Unfortunately its just not an option at the moment. I really do hope the issues get sorted out and that one day soon we can actually enjoy the game. The idea behind it is so great, If only it was actually delivering.
I’ve experienced these same issues, though they tend to happen less frequently then when the game first came out.
Now, I run a weekly Customs Night, and one of the tricks we’ve been using is to start an Xbox Live Party. While you’re in a chat-party, you can invite everyone in the chat to the game(so if 2+ people get bumped out between games, one button invites them all back.) In addition, even if you all get separated, you can still communicate.
I don’t know how many players you are allowed in a party at one time, but I hope this helps!
I was one of the other players trying to play with Luigifreak last night, I would like to reiterate everything Luigi said, sadly as much as I love Halo and it is in fact one of the few PvP games I actually play online, I am becoming more disillusioned.
As Luigi said we have been playing Halo in one of its forms since the first xbox, most of which is customs, and I can’t remember having the issues we are having now. Guys all we ask is for a game to work as expected or at least be honest with us in terms of what is fixed and what isn’t.
I am doing it real tough with cash flow at the moment and really worked hard to get this game to play the regular sessions we hold usually run by Luigifreak.
I want my money back I am so dissapointed.
Like Sentinal Oz, Its a real mission with the kids to get on and game, that’s why the custom sessions we hold are so valuable.
I tried to join the Feedback program, it is only open to US and EU members, so is this sending a message to us Aussie gamers that we don’t have an opinion or our feedback is not wanted ??
I also joined the group with luigifreak and after seeing some positive improvements in matchmaking it really saddens me to see that custom games still appear to have the problems I had seen fixed in MM… especially that related to lag from network spikes.
A lot of the people here have been playing customs together for many years and have seen how Halo used to be the gold standard for MP gaming for Xbox. So seeing it now lose that mantle so completely and dramatically really stings.
In my opinion the latest update made customs worse. Didn’t even attempt to fix anything for customs, but for some reason (derp?) they removed the Invite Only option. Now it’s assumed to be Friends Only all the time. Remember when we could set it to Open, Friends Only, Invite Only, or Closed? Remember when we could set a max party size? Remember Reach?
