H2A Boom Ball does not explode randomly

Games Halo: The Master Chief Collection
1

Hello all, I’ve submitted a ticket about this issue - #80543 - and I thought I’d ask for input from some other players.

Has anyone else noticed an issue with Boom Ball in the Halo 2 Anniversary Action Sack playlist? I’m not talking about the sickening amount of screen shake from the Brute Shots, that’s for another topic - at the start of each game it says that the ball will explode randomly but it never does. There is a version on Boom Ball in Halo Reach where this feature works as intended and the ball detonates every 30-60 seconds but after several games of Boom Ball in H2A I’ve yet to see the ball explode. I was grinding out a lof of Action Sack for the “50 On This Account” challenge this week since the games are usually quick and fun so I’ve played my fair share of Boom Ball. I had one game where I held the ball for about 80 seconds uninterruped which I don’t think would be possible if it was working correctly.

I downloaded the game type stored in my Temporary Files and I think the game mode is not configured correctly. There is a setting for Hot Potato Timer which is set to Disabled. Halo Reach’s game options are layed out a little differently but for the Reach variant it seems to be enabled as expected. I haven’t tested it in custom games yet but I presume that changing the Hot Potato Timer from Disabled to a different value would make the game work correctly.

Could anybody else who has played H2A Boom Ball recently check their Temporary Files and confirm is this is the same for them too?

2

This is all great information thanks for taking the time to dig into this. If you haven’t already, I would recommend updating your ticket with all of this relevant information. The good news is that since you have a ticket placed you’ve already taken the correct steps on getting this issue resolved and can now let the developers’ dig deeper. They will reach out if they need anything additional from you or other members of the community!

3

I finally had some free time to test out the Hot Potato Timer setting in a custom game and I’m 100% sure that the issue is caused solely by this setting being set to Disabled. I changed the setting to 30 Seconds and the game works as intended.

I’ve created a short demonstration video which you can see here:

The top screen shows the official gametype found in Action Sack while the bottom screen shows my modified gametype with the Hot Potato Timer changed to 30 seconds. No other changes were made to the gametype aside from the name and description. The map was modified to have one spawn point and one bomb spawn for consistency between the videos.

I’ve updated my support ticket with my video and a small write-up so hopefully they’ll be able to fix this in the near future. I would still appreciate if anyone else wanted to chime in and confirm that they have also experience this issue in H2A Boom Ball!