Halo 2 Co-Op Campaign Over Live Issues - help?

Games Halo: The Master Chief Collection
1

I’ve posted this twice before, and I saw another thread by another user I can no longer find detailing similar issues.

I spent nearly 3 full weeks trying to play Halo 2 Anniversary over Live Co-Op w/ my 67 year old father. He’s old and he gets… cranky and angry quickly when things don’t work. So a lot of times when we finally connect, I’m dealing w/ an angry old guy playing like a nut job. lol

The first day we spent 90 minutes of time, 90 minutes of time we should have been enjoying playing, trying to connect to our Co-Op H2A games. My NAT was open. His was moderate. Things we tried that never worked:

  1. Start party outside of MCC
  2. Start party inside MCC
  3. Start party and game inside MCC
  4. Game only invite

He invited me. I invited him. Rinse, repeat. The results were the same. One of us would hear the “beep, beep, beep” and be disconnected from the game with an error about the game being full or being disconnected from the game. 90 minutes we did that. The really aggrevating part is that at times, I would not only get disconnected and dumped to the main menu, I would lose ALL audio capability as well. No more chat, no game sound. I am using the MS stereo headset to play. If I unplug it, then plug back in, the sound comes back.

And of course, with these disconnects comes the game believing either I’m still in his game, or he’s in mine, so we inevitably have to completely dump out of the game to the home screen, the “manage” the game, and quit, then start it back up.

Next time we got to play, we tried again. All the same as above, Open NAT on mine, moderate on his. Same results. At that point I said “let’s try Halo: CEA” and… that worked PERFECTLY. Well, he reported minor input lag (doesn’t sound like we are experiencing the same level of input lag as others here as we aren’t having any issues), but it worked.

The next night I went to their house and fixed their network for his NAT to be Open. We tried again the next day, all the same as above but with open NATs on both ends. Same results every time. It didn’t matter who started the party or game, it was the same results. We stopped beating our heads against the wall and went back to H:CEA and finished it.

Next time we played was the following Sunday night, and once again, same results as above with open NAT on each. We went to Halo 3 and had no problems.

Last Tuesday, once again, same issues as above. Rinse. Repeat. We went to Halo 3 again.

Friday night, same results. Finished Halo 3, no problems.

Then, somehow, after doing all the same stuff on Sunday night, we ACTUALLY got a connection. The difference was I put it on classic visuals before trying to connect. That worked. Once. Now, even w/ open NAT on both ends, and visuals classic or remastered, I cannot get him to join my game. Thankfully, however, we found that as long as I connect to his game (HAS to be classic visuals to connect), at least after 2-3 attempts (each attempt taking at least 4 minutes, so wasted play time of 12-15 minutes) we can get in. Thankfully we finished H2A last night on Co-Op and will move back to Halo 4 tonight.

I would, however, very much appreciate being able to connect my H2A game to co-op campaign reliably. We finished 1-3 on normal difficulty. We want to move up to Heroic, then go back and do Legendary together on each game. It seems 1, 3, and 4 will be good to go, but 2 will continue to give us a fit, which means we will, once finished w/ 1,3, and 4, give up and go play something else together instead. And what I find is that when we dump a game, we dump it. We likely won’t come back thanks to the frustration level.

Are there any other recommendations for things to try? Should I log the dates, times, and attempts made and report back to 343i? It has to log this stuff somewhere, right? Maybe going through the logs for our games would help shed light on the issue? If someone from MS or 343i want to sit and watch us while we connect, I’m up for that too, I just want to get this working for me, and hopefully, everyone else.

Every update that comes down, I always hope it’s to fix co-op campaign, and every fix is 95% focused on Multi Player. It’s frustrating for us. I understand, many, many people want MP to work well. I get it. But I feel like campaign players are being forgotten and lost in the shuffle.

Help? Please?

2

I have been suffering the same problem as you, my friend… I just moved from my home town in October so my best friend and I bought this game because it was really important for us to be able to play co-op stuff together(loved playing gears together and wasn’t in to videogames when all halo games originally came out so it was going to be a new experience for him as well)

I have found no threads on this issues except for this one and the one you had originally posted a day or so after release.

We are both running with an open NAT so I don’t think that is the issue… ALL OTHER CAMPAIGNS LOAD CORRECTLY FOR CO-OP AND HALO 2A RUNS FLAWLESSLY FOR ALL PARTY MEMBERS IN SOLO PLAY

Atleast get back to us on this issue. I know you are doing the best you can as far as patching this collection, but it is still off from where it should be-- not to mention where it should have been when it dropped about a month ago. I’m a long time fan of this franchise but my time to play with my friends (who are all now in that black box sitting on my entertainment center) is very limited, and gets even more limited as our lives continue to change. We don’t have the time to fire this game up day after day after we have all finished our family obligations and kids are to bed, and hope for it to actually work - just to be let down by the fact that it’s STILL NOT FIXED.

Please, 343, just give us some sort of reason to why we shouldn’t give up and trade off what should have been a great system exclusive for Xbox One. I’m sure you guys are just as dissapointed about how the final product released as us consumers are…

3

I’m experienceing the same issue.

4

Bump so we can maybe get to the bottom of this

5

Similar issues. Cannot connect many players on Halo 2 but it works just fine when playing Halo: CEA. Something is broken.

6

I think the saddest part for me is that they are fixing a ton of multiplayer issues, but they aren’t even mentioning issues like this one.

I’m sure they are aware of it, or I hope they are, but for something that’s been going on for 4 weeks, I would have hoped to at least get a nod of “yep, we know it’s an issue, it’s on the list.” I don’t care where it is on the list at this point, since I’ve moved to other games at this point, but when we come back to it to play on Legendary I want to know it will work.

7

I just posted about an issue similar to this on another forum where there didn’t seem to be any reports of this bug. Good to know that I’m not the only one getting it, though.

Here’s what I originally posted:

> As you all probably know, MCC has been plagued with ‘Failed to connect’ issues ever since launch. This happened all the way until the most recent update, but my friend and I were still able to get through Halo CE on Legendary.
>
> Now we’ve moved onto Halo 2 Anniversary where all WAS well until we hit the mission ‘The Arbiter’. Whenever we start up the game, the loading screen for ‘The Arbiter’ appears, but soon after the host (we’ve tried both of us hosting, in vain) gets sent to the Halo:MCC loading screen and the other player sits on the loading screen for ‘The Arbiter’ while constantly getting error ping sounds. Afterwards we both get kicked to the main menu and can’t even find each other in the Roster until we go to the Home screen and quit the game from the Menu button menu.
>
> I’m not sure if this happens for everyone else, if it only affects this mission (or H2A’s campaign), or if it’s because we’re playing co-op, but we tried 3 player co-op on Halo 4 and it let us play properly. We have yet to try the previous or following missions in H2A’s campaign, but right now it feels like it’s just the whole campaign doesn’t like co-op play.

TL;DR My friend and I have been getting ‘Failed to connect’ issues since launch, but those have disappeared. We finished Halo:CE fine, but now we’re onto ‘The Arbiter’ on H2A and it keeps kicking the host to the Halo:MCC loading screen and the other player hears constant error beeps until failure. From there we can’t see each other on the Roster until we fully quit the game from the Home screen. We aren’t sure if this is caused by the level, or if the issue plagues the whole H2A campaign. Like OP said, Halo:CE worked fine when we tried after the latest update and, heck, even Halo 4 co-op worked.

8

I actually had the same issues, obviously. The one that really kills me is when it disconnects me, then kills all of the sound from my headset (using the MS wireless headset)

9

same issue here, gonna try the classic graphics method now…so frustrating that it is Halo 2!

10

I am, even after the 12-15-2014 patch, still experiencing this.

I am hoping someone from 343i finally sees this thread and addresses any plan to fix it. Or to tell us they won’t fix it and they don’t care. I won’t be happy with the latter, but knowing that is better than knowing nothing.

11

The same problem persists for me and my buddy as well. We are trying to play the Halo 2 campaign every day over Xbox live, to no avail. This has been a very frustrating experience from the start, to say the least!

12

Same problem. I actually posted something like this a week ago and 1 person replied saying “co-op is not a big part of the game, so who cares?” lol I was dumbfounded at this idiots comment. The campaign is what makes Halo awesome! and playing with a friend or friends makes it 10x better imo.

13

Gets pretty annoying when your hosting a co op game and you get disconnected from your own game. Thx 343 for not fixing that it’s been over a month and I still can’t play co op on any halo that’d a great big middle finger to me seeing as how I pre order your halo 4 console when it came out and the MCC aswell.

14

I’m having the same issue trying to play Halo 2 over Xbox live with my cousin. We have trouble starting the game, and once we retry for a half hour or so, we can finally start playing. However, we then get kicked out in the middle of the mission, and lose all of our progress. We had no trouble playing Halo 1

15

Same. Please fix!

16

I’m with you guys on all of this.

Acknowledgement by 343 on the campaign troubles is what I am after as well.

The problems with H2A aren’t even the extent of them. There are framerate drops in each of the games, both split-screen and online (especially with 4 players in H3 and H4). Strange lag in online co-op in CEA (at least). Plus the save progress bug is a major issue, as well as frequent crashes and problems connecting.

I mean, why go through all the trouble (and the promotion) of remaking H2 if this is how it will end up? Doesn’t make sense, so I would assume/hope 343 will tackle the troubles sooner or later, and while I know MP is their top priority right now, many of us bought MCC to play the campaigns too. I just hope they do not forget that.

17

Yet another bump… C’mon 343i!

18

Has anyone had any luck with this yet?

I am also really pissed off that 343 haven’t mentioned anything about this. I’ve finished Halo 1, 3 and 4 co-op online with my mates but we cant do Halo 2. We have never once successfully connected. Isnt H2A the main reason this game was released? and it doesn’t even freaking work. I wish there was somewhere i could make a formal complaint and get compensation. But unfortunately the game is so broken i feel my voice slipping away into a crowd of angry, angry fans.

19

Friend and I are trying to get through Halo 2 on legendary. We did experience issues trying to start a mission and had to try several times before getting in. That was last month. Tonight we started up the campaign again and started the game with no issues.

Our problem is trying to beat the mission Regret. We’ve played through the mission and at random places towards the end of the mission the game crashes. We’ve tried this 5 times and it crashed again on us again tonight. It’s really frustrating, spending all that time getting through the level (that 2nd gondola section is plain madness with the banshees), only to have all that erased with the game consistently crashing on us. Guess we’re going to have to skip it and move on with that legendary badge not being lit. sigh

Unless 343 can somehow give us the credit and push it to our consoles somehow.

Seriously though, please fix Halo 2. Really. Please fix it. Start with fixing the mission Regret.

20

My issues are similar. My buddy and I have been trying to beat H2A legendary for about a week now. We are ok most of the time connecting and starting the game, but once we get half way or further into the level, the game will either randomly freeze and kick us to the home screen or just kick us altogether. It’s really frustrating seeing as we are about to attempt “Regret” for the fourth time in 2 days.

Seems as though my post is much later than the rest of these, meaning there has still been no fix…