[Locked] MCC Development & Flighting Updates

Happy New Year Friends,

Welcome to 2021, the 20th year of Halo. In the world of Development & Flighting, the team is back online and at work ironing out what the year will end up looking like for MCC. Let’s talk about Season 5, flighting, bloggos, and armor toggles.

Season 5 and Flighting
Right now we are looking at Season 5 coming down the pipe and rolled out early this year. After that we are working towards flighting additional global features. Both are in the midst of development as we speak, and though we have internal dates we are working towards, we are not yet ready to share them with you.

Once we have those locked in, y’all will be the… well.. probably not the first? I think we might share that with Bonnie and folks across the studio first, but we will shout them from the mountain top to y’all when we are good to go!

Future Bloggos
Last year, players asked for more video content in our blogs and new ways to ingest the content we are working on. Right now, I’m working on just that. If all goes well and it’s signed off on, players can look forward to a fun new way to learn more about some of our development work and specifically a look at what’s in Season 5. Like most things in production, this piece is subject to change, but it's looking pretty great right now. I can't wait to share!

Armor Toggle
We received the question last year about the new armors coming to Season 5 and whether there will be a toggle added in. While we definitely heard you, at this time I do not have an update. Our team just got back in office and our partners are still investigating. Once this information is at hand and we have a decisive plan going forward, we will be sure to share it with you.

This year is going to be an awesome, fun, and very Halo filled yet again! Super excited for everything we’ve got planned in 2021 across MCC and look forward to working hand in hand with folks once more.

Thanks for stopping in y’all, and as always, we will see you online.

Cheers,
Postums

Hello Friends,

And welcome back to another weekly MCC Development and Flighting Update! This week we are going to discuss a nameplate you can earn through this Sunday, take a brief look at next week’s playlist update, and flag a change we made based on player feedback yesterday. There is still no new news this week on the next series of flights for MCC, but we are working through plans of when and what.

Though speaking of new news, you may have seen we announced that Season 5 is going to kick off next week!

Season 5
On Wednesday, January 27th, Season 5 along with a game update will roll out to players around the globe for all platforms. With it, players can look forward to all new customization options that you can unlock through Timed Seasonal Challenges, in-game events, and through the free 100 tier season pass. As part of the game update, we do have a few bug fixes and as well as an update to the cosmetic toggle for players in Halo 3 who want to hide the new armors coming with Season 5 and keep a more classic visual experience. For an early understanding of what all is coming, players can look forward to these things in game next week:

• 80+ pieces of armor to unlock across Halo 3 and Halo: Reach
• New Weapon Skins
• New Timed Seasonal Challenges with 4 customization rewards
• A game update for the Xbox One, Series X|S, and PC
• And even more!

Stay tuned next week for more details and information about Season 5!

117 Day
Every year we celebrate something for January 17th, also known as 117 day. This year is no different! Players who have logged in starting at 4pm on January 16th until this weekend on January 23rd, will unlock the 117 nameplates to customize your online persona. If you have not logged in yet, get to it!

Rocket Race
Rocket Race is coming back to MCC next week. On January 27th, players can look forward to grabbing a friend, some spare rockets, and yeet their way cross map to victory!

Halo: Reach Team Hardcore
Last week, we mentioned an update we made this week to Halo: Reach Team Hardcore. It’s actually the update directly above this one! Unfortunately, soon after it went live players began letting us know that the spawns on the map were not working appropriately for the Team Slayer and Capture the Flag variants played on this map. Due to these issues, we rolled back that map swap on Thursday of this week. Thank you all for the feedback that this was happening. We will work on getting these fixed up before bringing it back again at some point in the future.

That’s all we got for this week friends. Thanks everyone for stopping in this week and checking out the latest and greatest in the land of MCC. As always, thank you for stopping by and we will see y’all online!

Cheers,
Postums

Thank you for taking the jump with us from the previous post. Let's continue!

Duck Tales
Now, let’s roll on into more about 2021 and its most current implementation from the Publishing Team’s Technical Designer, Dana Jerpback. Take it away buddy!

“Thank you Postums! One of the goals of MCC’s challenge system is to create exciting moments for players to rally behind and remember each season. One such opportunity to facilitate this is reviving legacy Halo achievements as challenges with new and unique rewards. With the launch of ODST Firefight in MCC, we brought back the legendary “Vidmaster Endure” achievement as a challenge. To facilitate this, we updated the original achievement logic to account for game variants and ODST Firefight’s new asynchronous networking model. The former ensured we maintained the integrity of the challenge in a world where players could grant themselves infinite ammo, damage multipliers, extra health, weapon and vehicle upgrades, etc. The latter required us to change the way the challenge criteria were tracked by the game host and then messaged to and then queued for clients (this is why clients would often see the challenge pop a few seconds after the host).

For this season, we took variations of this approach for two new challenges. First, we created a new challenge “Release the Geese!” (somewhat of a misnomer given that the plural form of “Mongoose” is, in fact “Mongooses”, but I digress). This challenge was inspired by and, in part, based on the existing “Vidmaster Annual” achievement (which is already in MCC as an actual achievement). This was a fun mix of new and old and the reward prompted us to rotate in the fan-favorite Rocket Race playlist in social matchmaking for players to show off their fancy new Mongoose skin. On the other end of the spectrum, we also decided it was time to bring back the infamous “If They Came to Hear Me Beg” achievement. For this challenge, we left the original achievement logic completely untouched as a “black box”. You could say it’s back wort wort worts and all. For some, the frustration of the achievement was part of the charm. We intentionally tied a silly reward to this somewhat silly challenge to complete the package.”
Thanks, Dana, for sharing more on the behind the scenes for our Mongeese, Mister Chiefs, and all the workings of updates to Challenges.

Closing Time
Alright friends, that will do it for this week. We will see y’all back here next Friday. We will be sure to share any new details we find around the “Because You Begged” challenge as we take a look behind the scenes, so make sure to take a break from it as it will be available to earn through the entire duration of Season 5. Thanks all, and as always, we will see you online!

Cheers,
Postums

Hey Friends,

Welcome back to another MCC Development & Flighting Update. This week we have development and flighting news to share!

February Flighting
ICYMI – The Halo Community Update came out yesterday, and in it we talked to MCC flighting which is kicking off next week! The core details for flighting from it are as follows:
If all goes well in Rings 1 and 2, we plan to roll out our next public flight as early as next Thursday, February 18th. Some of the items we are hoping (things can change) to include in this flight are:

• Custom Game Browser: a new way to play with each other in MCC
• Season 6 content
• A new map for Halo 3 from Halo Online
• FOV slider support for all Xbox One consoles
• FOV slider will no longer be locked when Xbox Series X|S devices are set to 120hz
• Double Keybindings
• Mouse & Keyboard support for consoles
• Advanced Audio options
• View Model Customization options

Stay tuned and get ready to jump into the next flight planned to kick off next week! If you aren’t prepared…

Update Halo Insider Profile for Flighting
If you want to get in on the action, please make sure all of your Halo Insider information is accurate and current. This includes if you have picked up an Xbox One Series S|X recently or new parts for your PC. Verifying your email address and making sure it's up-to-date is the only way we can contact you when the time comes to send out flighting invites.
Not yet a Halo Insider? No problem! It’s quick and easy to opt-in – just head HERE and enter your info. Make sure to opt-in for communications and complete your email verification. And, if you want to participate via PC, please make sure to include a DXDIAG hardware snapshot.

Development Updates
This week, we have a reminder about 2 new pieces and are going to touch on a new feature! To kick this section off we are going to take a look at two nameplates you can snag in the month of February!

Black History Month
When Season 5 rolled out, we talked about a new nameplate players can acquire in the month of February for Black History Month. The time is now Spartans! Hop into game anytime this month and you will unlock the Black History Nameplate featured below:


Valentine’s Day Nameplate - February 11-15
Players can earn the “Put a Ring On It” nameplate from now through Valentine’s Day weekend, if you log in to MCC. Get in on it to show your love!
Please note, this nameplate is not automatically granted so it may take a week or two for you to see it. You should expect to see it by February 26.

Now onto a new feature coming to MCC in the near future!

Design Diaries
We are adding in an additional way for players to access content beyond the traditional Seasonal Challenges and Season Pass. Previously, players had to complete Seasonal Challenges while they were available and after that time was gone, you didn’t have a way to earn that same content again. With our new seasonal currency “store,” that is going to change up a bit. If you missed out on things previously, such as the Mister Chief Helmet in Halo: Reach from difficulties with the “Because you Begged” challenge, you may be able to use Season Points to still acquire the reward at a later date. We aim to offer up an additional way for players to use earned Seasonal Points to unlock various cosmetic content items.

Below I interviewed Max Szlagor, Design Director for the Publishing Team, to talk a little bit more about this new feature and what players can expect. Let’s get after it!

Postums: Hey Max, thank you so much for joining me today. So first and foremost, tell me what this new way to acquire Customization Content is? Let’s break this down a bit.
Max: We are introducing a seasonal currency “store” – and there’s no real money involved. Instead, the currency is season points (SP) which players will still continue to earn. Now instead of using SP solely to unlock items in the season pass, there will be opportunities to spend those points on prior seasonal challenge content you may have previously missed as well as all new items that debut in the seasonal currency “store.”

Is there a “cash” option for this where players will buy SP if they want to?
Nope. Players can only earn and spend season points as they always have – via the first 100 levels and the various Seasonal and Weekly Challenges.

Where did the idea for allowing previous seasonal challenge items to be unlockable come from?
We wanted to add more choices for players to unlock items and heard feedback that some prior season challenge requirements did not match the intended play patterns of people interested in the rewards.

We think challenges that require a bit of extra effort and offer unique rewards are important, and we will continue to introduce some items through these challenges going forward. The good news is that we now have another way to reintroduce those items at a later date.

How often will items rotate in and out for these?
Some items will rotate each week while others will be available for the duration of a season. Items may return to the rotation in future seasons.

Will there ever be new or unique items that are showcased in this new option?
Some items will debut in the season currency “store” They may end up being reintroduced through challenges or the seasonal “store” at a later date.

Will the rotation of items be linear and on a regular rotation or are we going to mix things up a bit?
There will be a scheduled rotation we regularly schedule, and we also work to share information on what items are rotating in and out for the following week to players.

That sounds like an amazing new way to give players additional options to get these customization pieces! What are some of the key design elements of this that excite you for players?
Expanding the ways players can earn and unlock items has been a goal for some time, and this is the foundation of another way for doing that. While we are using the seasonal currency “store” as a way to rotate in new items and to reintroduce items that are no longer available, we are also looking ahead at other ways this interface opens up new item catalog possibilities.

I have to ask, is this going to be available in flight for players to preview?
We are working to make this available in the flight. Our current goal is for a flight patch, which will come about a week or so after the flight kicks off.

Okay, that’s awesome. When would this become available to players in game and not in flight?
We are currently working towards having this become available with the Season 6 update.

Will players be able to use all previously earned SP on this?
Yes, as Seasonal currency doesn’t expire, and all earned Seasonal Points can be spent in this new “store” or in the season tiers interchangeably. One currency to rule them all.

Thank you Max for stopping in, as always, it’s been a pleasure!
Thank you Tyler for reaching out. I can’t wait to see how players interact with and use the “store.” As always, if there is feedback on this new option, please make sure to let us know! Thanks again!

Closing Time
Thank you everyone for stopping in and checking out this week’s MCC Development and Flighting Update. We have a lot coming down the pipe in terms of new content, flights, and news. Stay tuned next week as we get ready to kick off February’s flights in prep for Season 6 and all the new features coming to MCC with it! Happy Friday y’all, and as always – we will see you online!

Cheers,
Postums

Hey Friends,

This week we are continuing to discuss the latest MCC flight that kicked off last week. In our last post, we discussed that we were planning to update the flight this week with the Custom Game Browser, the new Season Points Exchange feature, and some various bug fixes. The team is still working on blockers this week for the flight update, so we are now targeting next week for this to happen and extending the flight to accommodate this change.

Flighting Update
When the update goes live, it will have the first iteration of the Custom Game Browser (which will only be available for Halo: Reach), improvements to performance for the map Waterfall, and various bug fixes.

There are numerous feedback items shared in our forums, across social media, and beyond that we are hearing coming through and the team is listening. When the flight update goes live, be sure to checkout aka.ms/HaloSupportInsider to view the updated Flight Overview and the Patch Notes. These will have the broken-down details for each change made with the update.

Custom Game Browser
Custom Game Browser (CGB) will be added into MCC over “Phases” as we build it to be supported across all games. Since sharing our initial concepts of it vs. what we are building now, it has really grown in terms of scope and features. Given this increase it is taking a bit more time for the entire feature to be developed and we are building it in a phased approach. This allows players to enjoy the foundation we have built and enjoy these benefits in the near term.

In flight, we will be releasing the “Phase 1” version which is the initial iteration of this feature to be built on over time. Once completed, this feature will be available for all titles in MCC, receiving various updates and bug fixes as needed as time progresses.

In advance of getting into the build and checking it out first hand, we wanted to share some additional insights into how the CGB will work and some of its core functionality. The CGB has three primary functions for players: Create, Browse, and Report which are detailed below.

Game: CGB will only be available for Halo: Reach in Phase 1.

Create Flow: CGB allows players to ‘Create’ your own custom game ‘sessions’ that will run on dedicated servers. Below are the options you will have as part of the “Create” flow for setting up ‘sessions’

• ‘Sessions’ will allow for a Session Name, a Minimum Players count, a Max Player count, Regional Server Selection, Repeat Game option, Team Changing options, and map and mode selections.
• There will be a ‘Pre-Game’ phase where if the minimum player count isn’t met, you will load in and play a modified slayer variant while waiting for the Minimum player threshold to be reached.
• CGB will allow players to essentially create your own ‘playlists’ to play the games you want how you want and run through a series of maps and modes. There is a ‘Repeat Game’ option which will allow you to continue playing with the same players on the maps and modes you’ve defined for the session immediately when a game ends when it is turned on. If not, when the match ends you will go through the natural Post Game Carnage Report flow and be able to select what happens next.
• Team Changing options include Leader Only, Pre-Game Only, and Always.
• You will be able to select the maps and modes you want to play with some limitations to how many combinations you can choose. We ask that you play around with it and let us know what you think.

Browse Flow: This is used for players to select and join an already active CGB session when you open up the browse tool. By default, the browse list is sorted by the Player column, in descending order and prioritizes games that have more players in them.

• Browse will display information about the session including Name, Game Modes, Maps, Player Count (current and possible), and ping to the server region being used.
• Selecting a session will allow the user to see more information about it, as well as join directly on it (if slots are available).

Report a Session Feature: Players can report a CGB session that violates the code of conduct.

• This can be done by clicking a new ‘Report’ option when viewing the details of a specific session.
• When reporting, the player can submit a string detailing what the report is on.
• Players have a maximum of 5 reports daily.

We are excited to have this feature rollout in its initial phase and look forward to seeing how players use it, hearing feedback on it, and then iterating on this feature over time as we move through the various phases to completion of it in the collection.

To be very clear to all players, if this feature is not ready based on flighting feedback like any feature we flight, we will not release it in the next season. Please be open, honest, and share your feedback about it and we will evaluate it and keep you posted on status accordingly. Thanks all!

Waterfall Improvements
Waterfall, a Halo Online map that’s being added to Halo 3, will also be receiving various performance bug fixes. We have seen many tickets and feedback come in around this map and have already been making improvements that will go-live with our next flight update.

Also, to be clear with everyone, we discussed a little bit on the MCC Season 6 Preview stream earlier this week, that Edge (the other Halo Online map current in the MCC flight) is currently not at the right bar to be released with Season 6. We flight content to have the community evaluate and provide feedback. Based on this feedback there are quite a few fundamental improvements needed at this time prior to it going out into the wild. So, we will be taking this information and letting it bake a little while longer for a future season.

Additional Bug Fixes
There are a handful of other smaller bug fixes that are coming in this update such as animated visor preview fixes, some name and vehicle customization debug strings, and a few other things. For full details on this, make sure to check out the flight’s patch notes that will be on the Insider Halo Support site when the update goes live.

Armor and Undersuit Feedback
We are looking for feedback from players around updates we have done to the Halo 3 armors in this flight. If you have participated in it, you will notice several updates we have made based on player feedback since the inclusion of the Halo Online armors for Halo 3 with Season 5. If you could please take some time to head over to this pinned thread and let us know your thoughts, it would be greatly appreciated around Halo 3’s armors and undersuits.

Thanks everyone for stopping in, Happy Friday, and as always, we will see y’all online!

Cheers,
Postums

Hello Friends,

Welcome back to another weekly MCC Development & Flighting update. This week, we are going to dive into a brand new feature that players were able to interact with during flighting. We saw that players had a lot of thoughts and opinions on this particular feature (among others) but for the Exchange, we had not yet fully explained the details behind it, our philosophy for how we plan to use it, and what our goals were with it to players.

For this week, let us just dive on into the details of what makes up the Exchange and what players should expect!

Design Discussion – Exchange
After the Exchange went live in our latest MCC flight, we got a lot of questions from players about the Exchange’s prices and how it would be ultimately used. To help shed some light on this, we reached out to folks on the Publishing Team’s Design Team for clarity. I would like to welcome to the floor, Dana “Duck” Jerpbak, the Technical Designer for MCC. Take it away Dana!

When we began designing the Season Points Exchange, we had two primary goals in mind. First, we wanted to create more incentive for players to engage with our progression system and afford them more choice in what they unlock. Second, we wanted to create an opportunity for players with a surplus of Season Points (SP) to spend them on items they may have missed out on initially. As an additional goal, we also wanted to minimize the fear of missing out, or “FOMO” associated with this experience. The Exchange will offer customization items from two overarching categories: previous limited-time season content and new themed content. With each season, each of these categories will expand and the total pool of available items will grow. These items will be split between Featured and Limited Time categories in the Exchange. The former is a collection of themed bundles of items which will grow over time (typically when a new season is introduced). The latter is a collection of standalone items which rotates each week. Of course, you could see featured standalone items or rotational bundles introduced in the future as well.

The limited time offers are an opportunity to bring past items which haven’t been available for some time back into the fold periodically (as well as to rotate in new content). For items which were previously available from challenges, it’s important that the item price reflects the difficulty of the associated challenge. Additionally, challenge rewards must “sit out” for a minimum of one season (roughly two months) after the challenge expires until they may enter the Exchange item pool. It’s important that players who worked hard to earn a reward experience the temporal value of having the reward well before it becomes more broadly available. Players are understandably attached to rewards they’ve earned for difficult challenges and we intend not to trivialize that by “just giving away” prestigious rewards. In the flight, we presented a selection of potential rewards with rough prices associated with them to gauge player feedback. Unsurprisingly, the players who earned the Avalanche Sniper skin from reaching rank 20 in the Recon Slayer playlist weren’t too happy to see it up for grabs for a handful of SP. In part due to this feedback, we will not be offering any former ranked rewards in the Exchange during Season 6. We won’t rule out the possibility of that happening in the future (with appropriate prices and after an appropriate time period, of course) but it is not planned for this season.

We want the Exchange to be something players are excited to revisit each week. It adds another choice for where players can spend their hard-earned SP. Players shouldn’t expect to unlock everything the first time it rotates into the Exchange AND blow through the season’s track right away. However, there will be a few additional SP on offer each week to accommodate the new place to spend them. If players miss out on an item they’re interested in, they can rest easy knowing that it will rotate back through the Exchange before too long. Additionally, the upcoming week’s batch of items is always displayed (along with their SP price) and fully previewable so players can plan to save up or set aside SP for an upcoming item.

We hope you enjoy the Exchange’s first outing with Season 6 and we look forward to tuning the content on offer based on your feedback in the future. Thank you to everyone who took it for a spin in the flight!

CONTINUED BELOW

Welcome back to our weekly MCC Development & Flighting Update series! This week we are going to be talking about issues in MCC features, CGB, improvements to Waterfall and some Legacy Halo 3 toggle work - and what we are doing to continue our investigations and improvements to all of them. Let’s dive on in!

View Model Offset

During our flight that ended earlier this month, players were able to see the first iteration of player view model offset options for customizing your view model in gameplay. We heard a lot of feedback from players who interacted with this and quickly realized it was not as robust as players had hoped. So, we have decided to hold off on this feature rolling out and are going to spend some more time addressing feedback that was given. It is in progress, but players will need to hold on for just a little bit longer for this to get into your hot little hands in game.

Custom Game Browser

This highly anticipated feature unfortunately was not able to make its way into the flight as we ran into several bugs along the way preventing its debut in the flight this month. We had hoped, and worked, but there’s just some critical bugs that were found and need to be addressed. Things relating to the launching of a team game not functioning appropriately, gameplay flows, and some additional core issues that needed to be resolved.
We don’t have an exact timeline of when we will be able to debut it to players, but it will be coming in a future flight for players to experience and give feedback on in much better shape than where we were at. Thank you all for understanding and the support for our teams to take their time to polish this feature up and get it out when it’s in a much better place!

Feedback and Bugs Addressed Since Flight

Through the duration of the flight earlier this month, we had quite a bit of discussion around many technical issues and feedback coming in across various parts. Two of them were various discrepancies that were meant to be put behind the Legacy view toggle for Halo 3 as well performance issues on the new map Waterfall.
For the first piece – we have made updates to both the Katana for the Hayabusa armor to appear correctly in all states and also resolved an issue where the updated first-person hands displayed the new models. Thank you to everyone who submitted tickets during the flight on both of these issues!

For Waterfall, we have made additional improvements to the map through the flight and afterwards to help address performance dips. Waterfall will be releasing alongside Season 6, but will be limited to custom games for the time being. We will keep our ears to the ground on what players are saying and find if there are additional changes needed to improve on the map.

That will do it folks. Thank you everyone for stopping in and we will see y’all same place next week? As always, we will catch y’all online!

Hey Friends,

Well, we did a thing this week. That thing was release Season 6, Raven, for Halo: The Master Chief Collection! A slew of information came with it. Below, are the important pieces in case you missed it:

• Season 6 Launch Blog
• Season 6 Launch Trailer
• Season 6 Seasonal Sitrep Video
• Season 6 Patch Notes
• Season 6 Known Issues
• MCC EULA
• MCC EULA FAQ
• Season 6 Community Playdate VOD
• Season 6 Press Kit

Grab some snacks and drinks to get caught up in case you haven’t already dug into them!

Content in Custom Games
As a reminder in case, you did not click on all the links above, there are 2 new content pieces added in the most recent update that are only available in custom games for now.

• Halo 3’s new map – Waterfall.
• “Escalation Slayer” that is available for Halo 2: Anniversary,Halo: Reach, and Halo 4!

Escalation Slayer will be making it’s debut into matchmaking next week! Waterfall will just take a little bit longer before it is added into the regular social rotation, but will first be coming with a rotational game category in social games. We are working on wrapping up a few more performance bugs on the map before rolling it out wide! Until then, here are the icons for them both when they go LIVE!

To read up on both of these additions, don’t forget to check out the Season 6 Launch Blog.

Halo Insider Program
Want to check out new content ahead of releases? You can! Players can get a sneak peek and help us make sure content is ready for prime time through the Halo Insider program!

If you are not yet a Halo Insider that’s not a problem! It’s quick and easy to opt-in – just head HERE and enter your info. Make sure to opt-in for communications and complete your email verification. And, if you want to participate via PC, please make sure to include a DxDiag hardware snapshot.

If you’re already registered, head on over to your Halo Insider profile and make sure your information is accurate and up-to-date. This includes if you have picked up an Xbox One Series S|X recently or new parts for your PC. Verifying your email address and making sure it's up-to-date is the only way we can contact you when the time comes to send out flighting invites.

Thank you all for jumping into game, into registering for our next series of flights, and have some fun this weekend in game!

Cheers,
Postums

Hello Friends,

Welcome back again for another Friday Development & Flighting Update! This week we have an announcement to make for players that we know you have been waiting on for MCC!

Custom Game Browser Scale Test with Halo: Reach in MCC
CGB is about to be in your hands! Last month, we had several issues that blocked CGB from being a part of our most recent flight. The team has been hard at work resolving issues and conducting a variety of tests internally and with our Ring 1 partners. All signs point to it being ready for primetime and we are inching closer.

As early as next Thursday we are working to get a scale test underway for Custom Game Browser (CGB) in MCC for Halo: Reach. If all goes well, it will kick off then and run until the following Monday. As with all things game development, this is just a target window and is subject to change.

Once the scale test is completed, CGB will be taken offline, and we will begin evaluating how the support systems handled the scale test. Based on these findings we will determine what (if any) additional work is needed to turn this feature on permanently. We cannot wait to get it into your hands, so start getting ready friends, CGB is on its way for Halo: Reach in MCC soon!

Design Discussions
Ahead of its release, I took some time to interview Max Szlagor, the Design Director on the Publishing Team here at 343. We have seen quite a few questions come up since flighting around CGB and our roll-out plan. So, grab some snacks and get ready for an update!

Postums: Hey Max, thank you for joining me! Alright, so let’s talk about the elephant in the room, what is the CGB?

Max: Thanks Tyler, it is always fun to talk with the community about our work! The CGB allows players to jump in and out of public custom game experiences quickly with an emphasis on maximizing time in game. Players will have the ability to create and join public custom multiplayer games of MCC that will initially operate on dedicated servers. In phase 1, players can create game sessions in Halo: Reach that include up to 3 CGB variants. Each CGB variant includes a single game variant and up to 6 map variants. This initial release is the beginning of an all-new custom game experience built from the ground up specifically for MCC. The focus of this initial phase is to validate our goal of maximizing player time through CGB variants and quick create and join scenarios.

I would be remiss if I didn’t ask the question some players will want to hear. We announced this feature, what, back in 2018 – what took so long for this one?

The CGB was announced prior to our work on the PC versions of Halo: The Master Chief Collection and the addition of Halo: Reach. As we looked at our roadmap and investigated the needs of CGB, we determined that additional foundational work in each game and our overall network code was required to deliver this feature at a higher quality. We are excited about the new ways everyone can play with the CGB and thank everyone for their patience as we roll out this feature in phases.

Speaking of phases, can you talk a little bit about what the phases are for CGB?

Due to the complexity of the CGB systems and the need to ensure correct functionality in each game, we will be rolling this feature out in phases. Each phase will be focused on a specific game and feature set. For future phases, we are looking to include support for additional games in MCC along with features pulled from our design plan and player feedback.

Why are we doing phases instead of all at once?

Rolling this feature out in phases helps ensure each game can run well in the new CGB framework. New network functionality is required for each game to support the browser.

What went into the decision to make Halo: Reach be the first title to get CGB?
We are starting with Halo: Reach because it is a good test case for new features, we are introducing into the CGB such as our pre-game phase where players can gather until the minimum specified player count is met that allows the full match to start.

New features huh? That sounds awesome! Do we have an idea of how long is it going to take to expand the feature to all games across the collection?

We expect each game will have unique challenges to address for it to be compliant with the new CGB flow. We do not have an estimate for when new games will be introduced at this time.


Do you have a list of some of the new features being added over time to CGB?

Key features being added to CGB over time include enhanced game creation options, filtering, quick matching, and several ways to make it easier for friends to play together.

A question that I have seen come up across the community for the server options includes a big one I’m very interested in! Will players ever be able to have servers up 24/7 on rotation?

While there is a possibility for servers to run for extended periods of time, we do not have the ability for a server to remain up indefinitely at this time.

Another question that I’ve seen: Will players be able to have modded maps and content in CGB?

We are focused on bringing each game and currently planned phases out ahead of any exploration into adding mods into CGB. Modded content has several additional requirements above and beyond what traditional game and map variants need for support.

Alright, one more specific ask: Will players be able to complete challenges in CGB?

Any challenges that could be completed in custom games should be completable in the CGB.


Those are all great things to know. Let’s take a sidestep and talk core design. What have been some of the key design pillars around this feature?

CGB is a way for players to host and find unique multiplayer content that may not be as suitable for traditional matchmaking scenarios. Our goal is to provide an intuitive and robust game hosting system that keeps players in matches as long as possible without having to jump in and out of the front end.

Since our initial announcement, CGB has changed a lot. What are some of the key changes the team has made to make this feature a reality?


CGB is a big, complex feature that required a lot of critical discussion, technical evaluation, and adjustment as we added more games to MCC, upgraded the networking infrastructure, and expanded on the core game feature set. We also wanted to make sure CGB offered a unique and new way to host, find, and play the variety of games and modes available.


From experience working on other CGBs, we felt the pre-game phase was important for keeping players engaged and this required new network plumbing work in MCC. We also wanted to improve in-game leader functionality ahead of the release of this feature to make it easier to manage players. And there is still more evolution to come as we roll this feature out, gather additional feedback, and discover the variety of games and ways in which players engage with CGB.

Thank you so much Max for stopping in and sharing some details around this new game feature! Let’s take a look at some updated screenshots for the Custom Game Browser below.

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