Please 343i, just tell us what happened.

Games Halo: The Master Chief Collection
1

It’s no surprise at this point that the launch of the Halo: TMCC hasn’t gone to plan. What was arguably the largest release on the Xbox One to date has been mired by a myriad of technical/network errors encompassing nearly every facet of the game including single player, co-op, competitive multi player, the new Halo Channel, etc.

As a result, these forums have devolved into a cesspool of tantrums thrown by children threatening everything from “never buying Halo again” to “lawsuits”. I’m not going to do that. It accomplishes nothing besides temporarily venting some steam with no long-term benefit to anyone involved.

That said, I’ve been gaming for over 20 years. I’ve owned at least one console every generation since the NES, nearly all of them purchased as their respective launches. And during that time, I can’t recall ever experiencing a large scale game launch that has been this technically broken. It’s not the usual glitches that have become the norm at launch in recent years…it’s unplayable. It’s broken. It’s as if the Quality Assurance consisted of yelling down the hall to Steve asking:

“this game works right?”

“of course, bro!”

“thanks!”

My personal experiences over the past week with the game have included:

  1. freezing arbitrarily during offline singleplayer, losing all save points in that level, and being reset to the beginning
  2. the screen going completely black, as if the visual input to the monitor has been cut off, while the audio and controller feedback remain intact
  3. spending egregious amounts of time searching for online matches, never to succeed
  4. being kicked out of online matches for dozens of different reasons
  5. not registering that I have actually completed many singleplayer levels and having to redo them
  6. perpetually having uneven teams in online multiplayer, even when there are an even number of players total
  7. other issues I’m sure that I am forgetting

343i, I’m sure you are aware of this but, Houston, we have a problem. Your reputation has been severely tarnished in the eyes of many (if not most) of the Halo community. This is a community I’ve been a party of for 13 years now, ever since I purchased Halo:CE a few weeks before I actually received the original Xbox for Christmas.

The adults in the community have one, simple question:

What happened?

And please, don’t just give us a sterilized answer approved for public release by your PR department. Most of us are assuming that you simply didn’t have adequate time for QA given the launch window Microsoft HQ established for the Holiday 2014 season. Is that what happened?

If so, I can understand that. Don’t tell us you “thoroughly tested the game and this is genuinely a surprise” because the current state of the game proves that demonstrably false. The QA department wasn’t slacking…they weren’t even in the building.

Or was it something else? I’m not a computer scientist, but I assume combining 4 separate games from different generations, on different engines, onto one disk is not an easy task. Did this create unique difficulties? We have been playing FPS games online over Xbox Live for over a decade now, but I don’t recall anything this broken being previously released.

I’m sure you have plenty of headaches at the moment. I won’t stamp my feet and demand immediate answers “or else”. But when you finally get this game back to a playable state, an official explanation would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

a Halo fan for 13 years

2

343 happened. I mean did you try Halo 4? Yes you probably did. Do you know what I mean? yeah, you probably do

3

> 2710872097148217;2:
> 343 happened. I mean did you try Halo 4? Yes you probably did. Do you know what I mean? yeah, you probably do

Yes, I have, but to be fair my experience with Halo 4 was the most limited of any Halo game. Still, it didn’t have technical issues of this magnitude. Unless I missed them?

4

> 2710872097148217;2:
> 343 happened. I mean did you try Halo 4? Yes you probably did. Do you know what I mean? yeah, you probably do

first of halo 4 in of itself was a completely new spin off of the halo games the bugs and glitches with the origional halo 4 are irelevant compared to whats going on with mcc blaming one in particular game isnt going to help the matter but as a fellow fan i agree a full scale explanation is whats needed as stated in the qoute below

> 2533274935834633;1:
> It’s no surprise at this point that the launch of the Halo: TMCC hasn’t gone to plan. What was arguably the largest release on the Xbox One to date has been mired by a myriad of technical/network errors encompassing nearly every facet of the game including single player, co-op, competitive multi player, the new Halo Channel, etc.
>
> As a result, these forums have devolved into a cesspool of tantrums thrown by children threatening everything from “never buying Halo again” to “lawsuits”. I’m not going to do that. It accomplishes nothing besides temporarily venting some steam with no long-term benefit to anyone involved.
>
> That said, I’ve been gaming for over 20 years. I’ve owned at least one console every generation since the NES, nearly all of them purchased as their respective launches. And during that time, I can’t recall ever experiencing a large scale game launch that has been this technically broken. It’s not the usual glitches that have become the norm at launch in recent years…it’s unplayable. It’s broken. It’s as if the Quality Assurance consisted of yelling down the hall to Steve asking:
>
> “this game works right?”
>
> “of course, bro!”
>
> “thanks!”
>
> My personal experiences over the past week with the game have included:
>
> 1. freezing arbitrarily during offline singleplayer, losing all save points in that level, and being reset to the beginning
> 2. the screen going completely black, as if the visual input to the monitor has been cut off, while the audio and controller feedback remain intact
> 3. spending egregious amounts of time searching for online matches, never to succeed
> 4. being kicked out of online matches for dozens of different reasons
> 5. not registering that I have actually completed many singleplayer levels and having to redo them
> 6. perpetually having uneven teams in online multiplayer, even when there are an even number of players total
> 7. other issues I’m sure that I am forgetting
>
> 343i, I’m sure you are aware of this but, Houston, we have a problem. Your reputation has been severely tarnished in the eyes of many (if not most) of the Halo community. This is a community I’ve been a party of for 13 years now, ever since I purchased Halo:CE a few weeks before I actually received the original Xbox for Christmas.
>
> The adults in the community have one, simple question:
>
> What happened?
>
> And please, don’t just give us a sterilized answer approved for public release by your PR department. Most of us are assuming that you simply didn’t have adequate time for QA given the launch window Microsoft HQ established for the Holiday 2014 season. Is that what happened?
>
> If so, I can understand that. Don’t tell us you “thoroughly tested the game and this is genuinely a surprise” because the current state of the game proves that demonstrably false. The QA department wasn’t slacking…they weren’t even in the building.
>
> Or was it something else? I’m not a computer scientist, but I assume combining 4 separate games from different generations, on different engines, onto one disk is not an easy task. Did this create unique difficulties? We have been playing FPS games online over Xbox Live for over a decade now, but I don’t recall anything this broken being previously released.
>
> I’m sure you have plenty of headaches at the moment. I won’t stamp my feet and demand immediate answers “or else”. But when you finally get this game back to a playable state, an official explanation would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> a Halo fan for 13 years

the game was not throughly beta tested im assuming that most likely no test happend because they assumed that due to the success of the previous games they figured it didnt need testing however this should have been tested that i can state however communication does need to be opend up more as it stands and i speak from the fact of the matter not for anyone else or for myself the halo comuynity has become skeptic at the moment many are worried that witht he upcomming halo 5 the same issues will occur therefor most of them while showing skeptisism of the current issues for future halo games are making the threats they are the comunity is in an uproar many have already gone to other games weather perminatly or not i cant say im not them however i will say agian a full scale explanation is needed as this situation could have been avoided

5

> 2533274848833728;4:
> > 2710872097148217;2:
> > 343 happened. I mean did you try Halo 4? Yes you probably did. Do you know what I mean? yeah, you probably do
>
>
>
> first of halo 4 in of itself was a completely new spin off of the halo games the bugs and glitches with the origional halo 4 are irelevant compared to whats going on with mcc blaming one in particular game isnt going to help the matter but as a fellow fan i agree a full scale explanation is whats needed as stated in the qoute below
>
> > 2533274935834633;1:
> > It’s no surprise at this point that the launch of the Halo: TMCC hasn’t gone to plan. What was arguably the largest release on the Xbox One to date has been mired by a myriad of technical/network errors encompassing nearly every facet of the game including single player, co-op, competitive multi player, the new Halo Channel, etc.
> >
> > As a result, these forums have devolved into a cesspool of tantrums thrown by children threatening everything from “never buying Halo again” to “lawsuits”. I’m not going to do that. It accomplishes nothing besides temporarily venting some steam with no long-term benefit to anyone involved.
> >
> > That said, I’ve been gaming for over 20 years. I’ve owned at least one console every generation since the NES, nearly all of them purchased as their respective launches. And during that time, I can’t recall ever experiencing a large scale game launch that has been this technically broken. It’s not the usual glitches that have become the norm at launch in recent years…it’s unplayable. It’s broken. It’s as if the Quality Assurance consisted of yelling down the hall to Steve asking:
> >
> > “this game works right?”
> >
> > “of course, bro!”
> >
> > “thanks!”
> >
> > My personal experiences over the past week with the game have included:
> >
> > 1. freezing arbitrarily during offline singleplayer, losing all save points in that level, and being reset to the beginning
> > 2. the screen going completely black, as if the visual input to the monitor has been cut off, while the audio and controller feedback remain intact
> > 3. spending egregious amounts of time searching for online matches, never to succeed
> > 4. being kicked out of online matches for dozens of different reasons
> > 5. not registering that I have actually completed many singleplayer levels and having to redo them
> > 6. perpetually having uneven teams in online multiplayer, even when there are an even number of players total
> > 7. other issues I’m sure that I am forgetting
> >
> > 343i, I’m sure you are aware of this but, Houston, we have a problem. Your reputation has been severely tarnished in the eyes of many (if not most) of the Halo community. This is a community I’ve been a party of for 13 years now, ever since I purchased Halo:CE a few weeks before I actually received the original Xbox for Christmas.
> >
> > The adults in the community have one, simple question:
> >
> > What happened?
> >
> > And please, don’t just give us a sterilized answer approved for public release by your PR department. Most of us are assuming that you simply didn’t have adequate time for QA given the launch window Microsoft HQ established for the Holiday 2014 season. Is that what happened?
> >
> > If so, I can understand that. Don’t tell us you “thoroughly tested the game and this is genuinely a surprise” because the current state of the game proves that demonstrably false. The QA department wasn’t slacking…they weren’t even in the building.
> >
> > Or was it something else? I’m not a computer scientist, but I assume combining 4 separate games from different generations, on different engines, onto one disk is not an easy task. Did this create unique difficulties? We have been playing FPS games online over Xbox Live for over a decade now, but I don’t recall anything this broken being previously released.
> >
> > I’m sure you have plenty of headaches at the moment. I won’t stamp my feet and demand immediate answers “or else”. But when you finally get this game back to a playable state, an official explanation would be greatly appreciated.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > a Halo fan for 13 years
>
>
> the game was not throughly beta tested im assuming that most likely no test happend because they assumed that due to the success of the previous games they figured it didnt need testing however this should have been tested that i can state however communication does need to be opend up more as it stands and i speak from the fact of the matter not for anyone else or for myself the halo comuynity has become skeptic at the moment many are worried that witht he upcomming halo 5 the same issues will occur therefor most of them while showing skeptisism of the current issues for future halo games are making the threats they are the comunity is in an uproar many have already gone to other games weather perminatly or not i cant say im not them however i will say agian a full scale explanation is needed as this situation could have been avoided

Wrong. It was tested in the Xbox Preview Program to a limited pool of people.

I know this because I am in that very program, and I saw something about it.

I’m not entirely convinced that this situation could have been avoided, either. Nothing short of a large-scale test could have stopped these issues. There is obviously something fundementally broken in a few aspects of the game.
It’s also fairly difficult for them to bug-track or reproduce, since the myriad of issues that people are facing are not occuring universally. (I mean some of the more gamebreaking ones, I myself have had the lobby split, Host messages, and occasional long wait times affect me as well)

6

> 2533274826920712;5:
> > 2533274848833728;4:
> > > 2710872097148217;2:
> > > 343 happened. I mean did you try Halo 4? Yes you probably did. Do you know what I mean? yeah, you probably do
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > first of halo 4 in of itself was a completely new spin off of the halo games the bugs and glitches with the origional halo 4 are irelevant compared to whats going on with mcc blaming one in particular game isnt going to help the matter but as a fellow fan i agree a full scale explanation is whats needed as stated in the qoute below
> >
> > > 2533274935834633;1:
> > > It’s no surprise at this point that the launch of the Halo: TMCC hasn’t gone to plan. What was arguably the largest release on the Xbox One to date has been mired by a myriad of technical/network errors encompassing nearly every facet of the game including single player, co-op, competitive multi player, the new Halo Channel, etc.
> > >
> > > As a result, these forums have devolved into a cesspool of tantrums thrown by children threatening everything from “never buying Halo again” to “lawsuits”. I’m not going to do that. It accomplishes nothing besides temporarily venting some steam with no long-term benefit to anyone involved.
> > >
> > > That said, I’ve been gaming for over 20 years. I’ve owned at least one console every generation since the NES, nearly all of them purchased as their respective launches. And during that time, I can’t recall ever experiencing a large scale game launch that has been this technically broken. It’s not the usual glitches that have become the norm at launch in recent years…it’s unplayable. It’s broken. It’s as if the Quality Assurance consisted of yelling down the hall to Steve asking:
> > >
> > > “this game works right?”
> > >
> > > “of course, bro!”
> > >
> > > “thanks!”
> > >
> > > My personal experiences over the past week with the game have included:
> > >
> > > 1. freezing arbitrarily during offline singleplayer, losing all save points in that level, and being reset to the beginning
> > > 2. the screen going completely black, as if the visual input to the monitor has been cut off, while the audio and controller feedback remain intact
> > > 3. spending egregious amounts of time searching for online matches, never to succeed
> > > 4. being kicked out of online matches for dozens of different reasons
> > > 5. not registering that I have actually completed many singleplayer levels and having to redo them
> > > 6. perpetually having uneven teams in online multiplayer, even when there are an even number of players total
> > > 7. other issues I’m sure that I am forgetting
> > >
> > > 343i, I’m sure you are aware of this but, Houston, we have a problem. Your reputation has been severely tarnished in the eyes of many (if not most) of the Halo community. This is a community I’ve been a party of for 13 years now, ever since I purchased Halo:CE a few weeks before I actually received the original Xbox for Christmas.
> > >
> > > The adults in the community have one, simple question:
> > >
> > > What happened?
> > >
> > > And please, don’t just give us a sterilized answer approved for public release by your PR department. Most of us are assuming that you simply didn’t have adequate time for QA given the launch window Microsoft HQ established for the Holiday 2014 season. Is that what happened?
> > >
> > > If so, I can understand that. Don’t tell us you “thoroughly tested the game and this is genuinely a surprise” because the current state of the game proves that demonstrably false. The QA department wasn’t slacking…they weren’t even in the building.
> > >
> > > Or was it something else? I’m not a computer scientist, but I assume combining 4 separate games from different generations, on different engines, onto one disk is not an easy task. Did this create unique difficulties? We have been playing FPS games online over Xbox Live for over a decade now, but I don’t recall anything this broken being previously released.
> > >
> > > I’m sure you have plenty of headaches at the moment. I won’t stamp my feet and demand immediate answers “or else”. But when you finally get this game back to a playable state, an official explanation would be greatly appreciated.
> > >
> > > Sincerely,
> > >
> > > a Halo fan for 13 years
> >
> >
> >
> > the game was not throughly beta tested im assuming that most likely no test happend because they assumed that due to the success of the previous games they figured it didnt need testing however this should have been tested that i can state however communication does need to be opend up more as it stands and i speak from the fact of the matter not for anyone else or for myself the halo comuynity has become skeptic at the moment many are worried that witht he upcomming halo 5 the same issues will occur therefor most of them while showing skeptisism of the current issues for future halo games are making the threats they are the comunity is in an uproar many have already gone to other games weather perminatly or not i cant say im not them however i will say agian a full scale explanation is needed as this situation could have been avoided
>
>
> Wrong. It was tested in the Xbox Preview Program to a limited pool of people.
>
> I know this because I am in that very program, and I saw something about it.
>
> I’m not entirely convinced that this situation could have been avoided, either. Nothing short of a large-scale test could have stopped these issues. There is obviously something fundementally broken in a few aspects of the game.
> It’s also fairly difficult for them to bug-track or reproduce, since the myriad of issues that people are facing are not occuring universally. (I mean some of the more gamebreaking ones, I myself have had the lobby split, Host messages, and occasional long wait times affect me as well)

I feel like they knew about it, because even those people in the review program weren’t able to get into games.

It seems completely irresponsible to release a game as so called groundbreaking and huge without doing extensive testing.

Very very careless.

7

> 2533274826920712;5:
> > 2533274848833728;4:
> > > 2710872097148217;2:
> > > 343 happened. I mean did you try Halo 4? Yes you probably did. Do you know what I mean? yeah, you probably do
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > first of halo 4 in of itself was a completely new spin off of the halo games the bugs and glitches with the origional halo 4 are irelevant compared to whats going on with mcc blaming one in particular game isnt going to help the matter but as a fellow fan i agree a full scale explanation is whats needed as stated in the qoute below
> >
> > > 2533274935834633;1:
> > > It’s no surprise at this point that the launch of the Halo: TMCC hasn’t gone to plan. What was arguably the largest release on the Xbox One to date has been mired by a myriad of technical/network errors encompassing nearly every facet of the game including single player, co-op, competitive multi player, the new Halo Channel, etc.
> > >
> > > As a result, these forums have devolved into a cesspool of tantrums thrown by children threatening everything from “never buying Halo again” to “lawsuits”. I’m not going to do that. It accomplishes nothing besides temporarily venting some steam with no long-term benefit to anyone involved.
> > >
> > > That said, I’ve been gaming for over 20 years. I’ve owned at least one console every generation since the NES, nearly all of them purchased as their respective launches. And during that time, I can’t recall ever experiencing a large scale game launch that has been this technically broken. It’s not the usual glitches that have become the norm at launch in recent years…it’s unplayable. It’s broken. It’s as if the Quality Assurance consisted of yelling down the hall to Steve asking:
> > >
> > > “this game works right?”
> > >
> > > “of course, bro!”
> > >
> > > “thanks!”
> > >
> > > My personal experiences over the past week with the game have included:
> > >
> > > 1. freezing arbitrarily during offline singleplayer, losing all save points in that level, and being reset to the beginning
> > > 2. the screen going completely black, as if the visual input to the monitor has been cut off, while the audio and controller feedback remain intact
> > > 3. spending egregious amounts of time searching for online matches, never to succeed
> > > 4. being kicked out of online matches for dozens of different reasons
> > > 5. not registering that I have actually completed many singleplayer levels and having to redo them
> > > 6. perpetually having uneven teams in online multiplayer, even when there are an even number of players total
> > > 7. other issues I’m sure that I am forgetting
> > >
> > > 343i, I’m sure you are aware of this but, Houston, we have a problem. Your reputation has been severely tarnished in the eyes of many (if not most) of the Halo community. This is a community I’ve been a party of for 13 years now, ever since I purchased Halo:CE a few weeks before I actually received the original Xbox for Christmas.
> > >
> > > The adults in the community have one, simple question:
> > >
> > > What happened?
> > >
> > > And please, don’t just give us a sterilized answer approved for public release by your PR department. Most of us are assuming that you simply didn’t have adequate time for QA given the launch window Microsoft HQ established for the Holiday 2014 season. Is that what happened?
> > >
> > > If so, I can understand that. Don’t tell us you “thoroughly tested the game and this is genuinely a surprise” because the current state of the game proves that demonstrably false. The QA department wasn’t slacking…they weren’t even in the building.
> > >
> > > Or was it something else? I’m not a computer scientist, but I assume combining 4 separate games from different generations, on different engines, onto one disk is not an easy task. Did this create unique difficulties? We have been playing FPS games online over Xbox Live for over a decade now, but I don’t recall anything this broken being previously released.
> > >
> > > I’m sure you have plenty of headaches at the moment. I won’t stamp my feet and demand immediate answers “or else”. But when you finally get this game back to a playable state, an official explanation would be greatly appreciated.
> > >
> > > Sincerely,
> > >
> > > a Halo fan for 13 years
> >
> >
> >
> > the game was not throughly beta tested im assuming that most likely no test happend because they assumed that due to the success of the previous games they figured it didnt need testing however this should have been tested that i can state however communication does need to be opend up more as it stands and i speak from the fact of the matter not for anyone else or for myself the halo comuynity has become skeptic at the moment many are worried that witht he upcomming halo 5 the same issues will occur therefor most of them while showing skeptisism of the current issues for future halo games are making the threats they are the comunity is in an uproar many have already gone to other games weather perminatly or not i cant say im not them however i will say agian a full scale explanation is needed as this situation could have been avoided
>
>
> Wrong. It was tested in the Xbox Preview Program to a limited pool of people.
>
> I know this because I am in that very program, and I saw something about it.
>
> I’m not entirely convinced that this situation could have been avoided, either. Nothing short of a large-scale test could have stopped these issues. There is obviously something fundementally broken in a few aspects of the game.
> It’s also fairly difficult for them to bug-track or reproduce, since the myriad of issues that people are facing are not occuring universally. (I mean some of the more gamebreaking ones, I myself have had the lobby split, Host messages, and occasional long wait times affect me as well)

During this Preview Program, were these errors all being reported as well?

Or are some of these new and previously unseen?

I’m honestly curious what their QA process entailed and still allowed such a fundamentally broken product to ship.

8

honestly they had to know about it but i bilieve that its the publishers fault which means microsoft studios’s fault because of the presure to put it out in time for christmas