I’m curious for the opinions of the community on this and hopefully if it garners a decent enough response with some good info, we can try and feed that back to 343.
> tl;dr Looking for feedback on the frequency of patches for MCC, no Halo 5 talk please, sub question of transparency on the patch and certification process.
What I’m looking for is your opinions and thoughts on the frequency of updates given out for the Master Chief Collection. Specifically:
Would you have liked to see more frequent updates from release until now, with patches coming every few days- Would you like to see more frequent patches from now on, with patches coming every few days- Were you happy with the weekly patches up until the 22nd- Are you happy for weekly patches to continue- Would you rather have seen bigger patches with longer periods between release (monthly?)- Would longer waits between patches be something you would like to see the moving towardsI try and keep as up to date with the forums as possible and this is one of the biggest inconsistencies I find with the community. Some want more, smaller patches and other want bigger, more spread out patches. To me it seems 343 tried to go for a middle ground and do almost weekly, with the exception being the 22nd until now. What would you find to be either your most preferred frequency or most optimal. Feel free to include your own suggestion if you like
What I would like to try and steer clear from discussing is “I just want a patch that works”. I think we all would love that truthfully, but we are a long way off of that in the world of software development I’m afraid. I would also like to steer clear of any Halo 5 beta discussion and focus solely on the MCC.
I also have been pondering transparency. I should maybe put this in another topic, but can’t hurt to mark it as a sub question here for now.
I’ve been thinking about the certification process for the patches that have been put through to Microsoft and wondered what the processes and practices are that gets the code changes from 343 and other companies that worked on the ports, through to the content updates that land on our boxes.(I am assuming that companies like Ruffian and Sabre are involved in these processes, but I can’t say for sure. I would have thought they would be)
Having worked in software and web development I have a pretty good understanding of the patching process for apps and frameworks, but this is a whole other scale of development to me. I think it would be good to have like a blog post or an episode of The Sprint that can give the community a better understanding of this - like what kinds of things delay patches?, is the certification process the reason that patch notes can’t be provided until the patch has started to propagate through to the community? (i.e. Things that fail certification get held back and only that which passes goes through), how do you rate the priority of fixes that need to be worked on?
I guess some of that stuff may be of absolutely no interest to a lot of you, you just want a game that works. I do too, believe me, but I would also like to gain a better understanding of what is being done to fix it and I’m sure the community would benefit from knowing some of this as well.
Sorry for the long post, I don’t do topics very often
So, thoughts?
Well I’ve been happy with the updates we’ve gotten so far. But perhaps I’ve just been incredibly lucky and have been able to find matches consistently because of my good internet connection.
I, personally, don’t really like the fact that they try and push updates out weekly. 343i should take longer to release patches, and these patches should have some decent and solid fixes. It will give them more time and flexibility by not cramming to push fixes out every week. I have a feeling that the patch coming soon is going to be pretty solid, since they haven’t really released any since the holidays. This is how it should be.
I would like to see updates once a week. Once every few days will probably make it too light on fixes, while once every month will make the file size too large, and the huge gap in time to wait for issues to be fixed would be discouraging.
I was not very happy with the weekly patches up until the 22nd in general because they seemed to fix very very little and managed to break things. I am happy that the game is not in such a bad state, but I feel like it should be better than it is now.
I have pretty bad internet, so these >1gb patches are brutal. If I get home from work and feel like playing Halo only to see a huge update that is going to take all night, it frustrates me. I am confused, as it seems they should be patching software bugs, not content. I do not understand why these updates are in the gigabytes instead of the megabytes.
Patches should be every two weeks. Give the team a little time to fix and properly test their patches, not rush out a patch every week that seemingly does nothing.
> 2533274922548310;3:
> I, personally, don’t really like the fact that they try and push updates out weekly. 343i should take longer to release patches, and these patches should have some decent and solid fixes. It will give them more time and flexibility by not cramming to push fixes out every week. I have a feeling that the patch coming soon is going to be pretty solid, since they haven’t really released any since the holidays. This is how it should be.
We haven’t had a “weekly” update in 3 freaking weeks.
I want responsible people to have Halo and not these mediocre ones. They never know a date when they announce any update, unlike other game companies, they tell you when and what time.
Here, we are like going to somewhere without directions.
I don’t care how many updates there are or that they will release, I care that these updates have a date and time and really fixing the game.
> 2533274813317074;1:
> What I would like to try and steer clear from discussing is “I just want a patch that works”. I think we all would love that truthfully, but we are a long way off of that in the world of software development I’m afraid. I would also like to steer clear of any Halo 5 beta discussion and focus solely on the MCC.
Well said.
I don’t expect anything more with upcoming patch’s neither should other users.
I’m happy with weekly updates, and I think they’re appropriate given the severity of the issues with this game. Bimonthly or monthly would be fine too; I think it really depends on the size of the studio and the state the game is in. This is a large studio with a very nonfunctional game; they should be pouring resources into it and shelling out updates as fast as possible, but maybe it doesn’t work that way. Maybe the testing/certification process does not make weekly updates feasible, which brings me to…
Transparency. I’ve kept up to date with this, but I haven’t followed it extremely closely so I can’t claim to know everything. To my knowledge, the developer statements we’ve received have been quite vague. I like that they’re releasing statements, but the statements do little in terms of an explanation. Issues that were not apparent in their internal testing environment? Ok, that’s fine, but it’s been nine weeks and little has changed in terms of playability. We’ve gotten “we’re working on xyz, thank you for your continued support” types posts since then. Again, those are good posts to make, but they aren’t substitutes for an actual explanation of what went wrong and what’s being done to fix it.
> 2533274813317074;1:
> …
>
> I also have been pondering transparency. I should maybe put this in another topic, but can’t hurt to mark it as a sub question here for now.
> I’ve been thinking about the certification process for the patches that have been put through to Microsoft and wondered what the processes and practices are that gets the code changes from 343 and other companies that worked on the ports, through to the content updates that land on our boxes.(I am assuming that companies like Ruffian and Sabre are involved in these processes, but I can’t say for sure. I would have thought they would be)
>
> Having worked in software and web development I have a pretty good understanding of the patching process for apps and frameworks, but this is a whole other scale of development to me. I think it would be good to have like a blog post or an episode of The Sprint that can give the community a better understanding of this - like what kinds of things delay patches?, is the certification process the reason that patch notes can’t be provided until the patch has started to propagate through to the community? (i.e. Things that fail certification get held back and only that which passes goes through), how do you rate the priority of fixes that need to be worked on?
>
> …
This is a good idea. I wonder if the community isn’t upset at the frequency of posts, they’re upset that very few details have been released on what went wrong and what’s going on. News came up that XBL is restructuring the party/matching system in some way, and there are thoughts that MCC is the first game to use this new system. Despite this being potentially big news, there has been no word from 343i about it.
To avoid getting too wordy, I’ll end by saying I do think more details on the patching process would be beneficial. I support your proposal.
Thanks guys, this is the kind of stuff I’m looking for and the more people that respond the better
> 2533274820365908;8:
> …They never know a date when they announce any update, unlike other game companies, they tell you when and what time.
>
> Here, we are like going to somewhere without directions.
And this is what my sub-question hopes to answer I’d like to try and get some info on the behind-the-scenes work of these updates.
Weekly updates seem appropriate until they run low on things to fix. With regards to transparency they have not done well. What I want is to see a list of problems that they are aware of and plan on eventually fixing. It’s very frustrating not knowing whether or not certain bugs (particularly related to forge for me) will ever be addressed. Also, it has been extremely frustrating how MCC took a backseat to the Halo 5 beta and even HCS. I don’t think they’ve even acknowledged the existence of MCC in the last few bulletins. I paid for MCC and that’s what I want to hear about.
I think there needs to be a solid distinction between hotfixes and patches. For example. World of Warcraft can release hotfixes on an almost daily basis when they need to. The bigger stuff requires patches that always drop on Tuesdays. Tuesdays have become known as patch day. They even drop at the same time on Tuesdays. They keep you updated on their launcher on the status of their patches. They are incredibly detailed in their patch notes.
So here’s what we need:
An actual employee or mod on the forums that can answer questions. Not on twitter, not on Facebook. WoW has this.- A consistent day for big patches, aka Tuesday at 3:00 AM.- Detailed patch and hotfix notes such as: World of Warcraft example: Garrisons, Followers, and Outposts
Garrison Buildings
[Requires a realm restart] Barn: Trapping now awards a caged beast for each nearby party member with an appropriate level barn. More information regarding the change can be found on the forums.
Creatures
Shadowmoon Valley
Bahameye should no longer be incorrectly phased in some instances.- Hotfixes/playlist updates capable of being implemented on a daily basis at any time.- Big patches should have articles to go along with them detailing the thought process and/or development process.
> 2533274813317074;1:
> I’m curious for the opinions of the community on this and hopefully if it garners a decent enough response with some good info, we can try and feed that back to 343.
>
>
> > tl;dr Looking for feedback on the frequency of patches for MCC, no Halo 5 talk please, sub question of transparency on the patch and certification process.
>
>
> What I’m looking for is your opinions and thoughts on the frequency of updates given out for the Master Chief Collection. Specifically:
> - Would you have liked to see more frequent updates from release until now, with patches coming every few days
> - Would you like to see more frequent patches from now on, with patches coming every few days
> - Were you happy with the weekly patches up until the 22nd
> - Are you happy for weekly patches to continue
> - Would you rather have seen bigger patches with longer periods between release (monthly?)
> - Would longer waits between patches be something you would like to see the moving towards
> I try and keep as up to date with the forums as possible and this is one of the biggest inconsistencies I find with the community. Some want more, smaller patches and other want bigger, more spread out patches. To me it seems 343 tried to go for a middle ground and do almost weekly, with the exception being the 22nd until now. What would you find to be either your most preferred frequency or most optimal. Feel free to include your own suggestion if you like
>
> What I would like to try and steer clear from discussing is “I just want a patch that works”. I think we all would love that truthfully, but we are a long way off of that in the world of software development I’m afraid. I would also like to steer clear of any Halo 5 beta discussion and focus solely on the MCC.
>
> —
>
> I also have been pondering transparency. I should maybe put this in another topic, but can’t hurt to mark it as a sub question here for now.
> I’ve been thinking about the certification process for the patches that have been put through to Microsoft and wondered what the processes and practices are that gets the code changes from 343 and other companies that worked on the ports, through to the content updates that land on our boxes.(I am assuming that companies like Ruffian and Sabre are involved in these processes, but I can’t say for sure. I would have thought they would be)
>
> Having worked in software and web development I have a pretty good understanding of the patching process for apps and frameworks, but this is a whole other scale of development to me. I think it would be good to have like a blog post or an episode of The Sprint that can give the community a better understanding of this - like what kinds of things delay patches?, is the certification process the reason that patch notes can’t be provided until the patch has started to propagate through to the community? (i.e. Things that fail certification get held back and only that which passes goes through), how do you rate the priority of fixes that need to be worked on?
>
> I guess some of that stuff may be of absolutely no interest to a lot of you, you just want a game that works. I do too, believe me, but I would also like to gain a better understanding of what is being done to fix it and I’m sure the community would benefit from knowing some of this as well.
>
> Sorry for the long post, I don’t do topics very often
> So, thoughts?
At the moment I’m kinda disappointed with how there is only one game mode with a ranking system and that game mode only has 5 different maps it becomes soo repetitive
also I would like an idea of when the ranking system on each game type is going to be introduced instead of “ranking coming soon” and should add some extra halo 3 specific playlists as its in of the most popular of the 4 games we get but other than that i think the multiplayer is fine now that it’s not completely broken but we could do with out people kicking other players for no reason during halo 2 and introducing betrayel boots on all the games
Would you have liked to see more frequent updates from release until now, with patches coming every few days
Honestly not sure. If they had actual solutions to things then weekly would be great. One thing at a time, and all that. I wouldn’t want them flailing blindly to appease us weekly though, and have problem after problem created by “solutions”.
Would you like to see more frequent patches from now on, with patches coming every few days
Yes, after the next patch I’d like to see them more often, as this patch should fix a lot of things, since it took so long. I realize that logic doesn’t necessarily apply to 343.
Were you happy with the weekly patches up until the 22nd
Didn’t have the game then.
Are you happy for weekly patches to continue
Only if they’re small and effective. This game is already likely to take up 25% of my HD before it’s all over.
Would you rather have seen bigger patches with longer periods between release (monthly?)
In retrospect this seems very obvious.
Would longer waits between patches be something you would like to see the moving towards
I feel I’ve already answered this twice. What I want is some level of efficiency.
Bumping this up to get a little more input. As we know, the latest patch has been delayed a few days so it can go through additional testing. What do you guys think about the 3 week period for this one, do you think it will be beneficial?
There should be a patch every other day to fix uneven teams and split parties. Each day the patch fails a new patch should be prepped and sent.
Sadly, the fact that the countless bugs weren’t revealed in test tells me 343 isn’t the company that should be running the franchise. In no way should Halo6 begin development under 343. They need to clean house.
> 2533274813317074;17:
> Bumping this up to get a little more input. As we know, the latest patch has been delayed a few days so it can go through additional testing. What do you guys think about the 3 week period for this one, do you think it will be beneficial?
The fact they can only reduce instances of Awaiting Privileges bug is not confidence inspiring. Either fix a bug or don’t. But don’t sorta kinda fix bugs and list it. It’s embarrassing. Halo is going to become a laughing stock.
Can you find out now many times this patch failed certification?
