Playlist: Flood
Map Name: -any-
Mode: Flood
Is this an exploit or broken feature?: Broken feature.
Describe the bug:
There are five Flood bugs that tend to occur when players join an in-progress game in Matchmaking or Customs. Some of these are legacy bugs inherited from Reach, and all are linked to Flood’s use of a “virtual” team system in favor of the core game engine’s real team system. Bug details are in the spoiler, and non-essential background information on the virtual team system can be found here.
Trait assignment failure
Occurs when a player joins and is placed on a virtual team, but fails to receive all of the player traits that members of that team should have. When dealing with gameplay-altering traits, like shields, synchronization with the host will compensate for this. Appearance traits, on the other hand, are almost never re-synchronized.
Traits should be properly assigned to the player after their next death.
Alliance status assignment failure, off-host
This is a desynchronization that occurs when a player joins and is placed on a virtual team. On desynchronized players’ consoles, Flood fails to properly assign alliance status for this player. Affected teammates see the new player as an enemy: they receive aim assist, and do not hear a betrayal announcement when they kill the player. Alliance status is properly assigned on-host, however, so teammates can be booted for teamkilling an affected player.
Flood appears to renew alliance statuses every time a player respawns: after the new player has died, they should show up properly for all teammates.
Alliance status assignment failure, on-host
Occurs when a player joins and is placed on a virtual team, but the host fails to properly assign alliance status for this player. They are able to kill all other players without penalty.
Flood appears to renew alliance statuses every time a player respawns: after the new player has died, they should show up properly for all teammates, and should be appropriately penalized for betrayals.
Virtual team assignment failure
Occurs when a player joins the game, and Flood utterly fails to assign them to either of the two virtual teams. They spawn with Base Player Traits and stock weapons (Assault Rifle + Magnum), and do not have access to game variant loadouts (Survivor or Flood). They can kill any player without penalty, and be killed by any player without penalty. They will not convert to Flood when killed by a Flood player, because they are not a Survivor.
Affected players do not influence Last Man Standing or round-end conditions. If the only non-Flood players in the match consist of one Survivor and one non-team player, that Survivor will become the Last Man Standing, and the round will end on their death, regardless of what happens to the non-team player.
Affected players will remain glitched until the end of the round. The gametype never catches and handles the edge-case of a player not being on a team.
Player model assignment failure
A Flood-specific bug that occurs when a player receives the wrong player model. This can cause Flood players to use a Spartan skin, and vice versa. This bug is notable in that it can be triggered under laggy conditions, without requiring JiP.
Oddly, a player model can also desynchronize between first- and third-person view. So networking is not the only trigger for this specific bug case: something can cause the model to fail to fully update within the confines of a single console.
How many times has this happened? Often. Bug is unpredictable.
Do you have a video of this in your fileshare? If so, please include your Gamertag:
<mark>DavidJCobb</mark>
I have a screenshot of a player trait assignment bug, and a film clip of a virtual team assignment bug. I don’t recall the file names off-hand, but both contain “Flood” and “JiP”.