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343: Explanation of What Happened with the MCC & Why It Was Left Unpatched Until Now

MCC online needs more then a patch, it needs rewriting from the ground up to get it working, hopefully that's what is going on.

MCC issues were multiplayer involving all the online being put together. Totally different story. Singleplayer was fine in MCC.

EDIT: Single player Had issues but wasn't broken

It has a few problems here and there, most of the bugs were fixed in early patches like halo 4 going black screen in some loading zones, I never did finish halo 2 anniversary but that was because co-op online was desyncing and impossible to finish.
 

FyreWulff

Member
I know a lot of people were upset about this game but his point about mistakes in testing is valid.

I've been involved in software testing for the last year or so and it's surprising how many things can actually go wrong that simply don't get thought of when testing complex systems in a test environment.

We have had misses too where 30+ people looked over a testing effort and nobody caught a crucial mistake in the testing environment or requirement setup that affected the final product.

In the end this stuff is still made by people and still can have flaws.

I remember when I thought I had some "battle tested code" that I wrote for something. It worked perfectly for a year. Then we threw a significantly large task at it and it was the largest meltdown (of a server/task, not me) in my career that I had to clean up. It wasn't a new task, just a significantly large one, and that was enough to make the code do something completely unexpected.

I now know to account for that case, and as Frankie points out, MCC changed 343's process. Every new game will have a beta. the One backend now has actual support for easier deployment of public betas. Their test environment has been upgraded. etc.
 
MCC was quite a disappointment as it never really worked as I hoped it would. I've been meaning since forever to play through all Halo games in a row but the issues scared me away from doing so. It's good they owned up to the mistakes and are finally finding ways to correct them, most developers would have moved on and that's it. When these updates hit they should put the game up for free (Games With Gold bonus game perhaps) and have all the fans rejoice in the ultimate Halo package. Looking forward to the patches and the X improvements.
 

eot

Banned
I know a lot of people were upset about this game but his point about mistakes in testing is valid.

I've been involved in software testing for the last year or so and it's surprising how many things can actually go wrong that simply don't get thought of when testing complex systems in a test environment.

We have had misses too where 30+ people looked over a testing effort and nobody caught a crucial mistake in the testing environment or requirement setup that affected the final product.

In the end this stuff is still made by people and still can have flaws.

If it was something that more testing could've fixed, then why couldn't they fix it years after the game shipping? Conversely, if it's proven to be so hard to fix, how would more pre-release testing have helped?
 
Happy this is happening. Can't wait to put another couple hundred hours into this. Wonder if they'll add more achievement Too? Some where a nightmare, but it was getting all 600 when the game would sometimes work.
 
I can appreciate the gesture however, I wonder why they weren't this straightforward to begin with? Clear, coherent and transparent communication from the get go would have done leaps and bounds to help mitigate all the blow-back. Can't stress how absolutely imperative an open dialogue with your customers is these days. Then again as others have said I think this may be 3 years too late. It's hard to believe how completely busted MCC was on release let alone how it managed to pass all the QA testing and certification. It clearly wasn't anywhere near fit for sale. I really do sympathize with the poor bastards who went out and bought XB1's just for MCC, what a slap in the face that must have been. It just boggles my mind how this happened, especially considering it's Halo. Arguably the most important IP to the Xbox brand. 343i must have lost a lot of credibility in eyes of fans, why should anyone in their right mind trust them? Sounds harsh to say but I imagine 99% of players don't care how easy or hard it is to develop, fix and maintain these games. Me personally, I just don't have the time, patience or tolerance to wait around for this sort of nonsense to be sorted out. Sad to say but Halo will no longer be a day-1 purchase for me. God help them if they screw this next patch up.
 

FyreWulff

Member
I can appreciate the gesture however, I wonder why they weren't this straightforward to begin with? Clear, coherent and transparent communication from the get go would have done leaps and bounds to help mitigate all the blow-back. Can't stress how absolutely imperative an open dialogue with your customers is these days. Then again as others have said I think this may be 3 years too late. It's hard to believe how completely busted MCC was on release let alone how it managed to pass all the QA testing and certification. It clearly wasn't anywhere near fit for sale. I really do sympathize with the poor bastards who went out and bought XB1's just for MCC, what a slap in the face that must have been. It just boggles my mind how this happened, especially considering it's Halo. Arguably the most important IP to the Xbox brand. 343i must have lost a lot of credibility in eyes of fans, why should anyone in their right mind trust them? Sounds harsh to say but I imagine 99% of players don't care how easy or hard it is to develop, fix and maintain these games. Me personally, I just don't have the time, patience or tolerance to wait around for this sort of nonsense to be sorted out. Sad to say but Halo will no longer be a day-1 purchase for me. God help them if they screw this next patch up.

In all honesty, Frankie and 343 never actually ran away from this whole situation. But I think they were also careful to not do the easy thing, which would have been to throw all the partners involved under the bus. They did not do that. They've always said it was their fault. I think we only know a couple of companies being involved from rare interviews and so on, and one of the companies doesn't even exist anymore.

I think there was a certain point where the only explanation or "transparency" would have been misconstrued as bus-throwing, so they elected to take their punches instead of talking about it.
 

nekkid

It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan.
I was pretty frustrated with the situation, but in retrospect I can understand why they waited to tell this to people until they had a concrete way forward.

Telling this to people a year ago or more and then saying “but yeah, we can’t do much to fix it” would have been so much worse.
 

FyreWulff

Member
I was pretty frustrated with the situation, but in retrospect I can understand why they waited to tell this to people until they had a concrete way forward.

Telling this to people a year ago or more and then saying “but yeah, we can’t do much to fix it” would have been so much worse.

Also this.
 
He talks about avoidable mistakes, and then about how they couldn't possibly fix it until now?

Wat

Reading is hard isn't it? Read it again. He states some mistakes were avoidable and some were not. That doesn't mean the mistakes made would have solved the issue. The mistakes made hid the problem until after it was released.

If it was something that more testing could've fixed, then why couldn't they fix it years after the game shipping? Conversely, if it's proven to be so hard to fix, how would more pre-release testing have helped?

He didn't say more testing would have fixed it. Better testing would have identified the problem a lot sooner and preferably before release. They were caught off guard by the problems. Better testing would have made it so they were more aware of the issues ahead of time rather than caught off guard.
 

SilverArrow20XX

Walks in the Light of the Crystal
I'll just quote myself from early last year to show the single player problems I ran into. I did a Heroic runthrough of the series and then replayed it on Legendary twice. I've never not run into at least one game ruining door bug on any of my playthroughs of 2 and 3 on this collection.

Played through all the games in the collection on Legendary over the Christmas holidays. Still had game ruining bugs in Halo 2 and 3 where sometimes doors wouldn't open to let you continue and you had to start the whole level over. Here's the ones I personally encountered.

After the Scarab segment in the final level of Halo 2 "The Great Journey", you clear a room of Brutes before moving on to the final area. A second wave is supposed to come out of the door that's the way forward after you clear the first wave. Sometimes they don't, and you're screwed. Happened the first time I played it at release too.

Final level of Halo 3, where you scale the pyramid with all the flood forms. Spark's supposed to open the door after you clear them all and some dialogue from Johnson triggers, but sometimes that dialogue doesn't trigger, Spark doesn't open the door, and you're screwed. This one also happened to me at release. At least this bug is near the beginning of the level.

In Halo 2's "Gravemind", there's a room with 2 Hunters towards the end of this long level. After killing them, Cortana is supposed to pop up and talk, triggering the door opening and more enemies appearing. Sometimes she doesn't, and you're screwed. Thankfully, this one didn't happen on my recent playthrough on Legendary, but that's probably just luck. I doubt they fixed it.

As it stands, I haven't played through either of these games without it happening at least once. Never had problems with the originals on the 360. Thankfully the other games in the collection don't seem to be plagued with it. It's such a shame considering how great of a collection it is.

I also encountered no less than half a dozen crashes when examining terminals, though I think those were fixed pretty quickly. I never even touched multiplayer and I can say with confidence that the single player was definitely NOT OK at launch.
 

Cranster

Banned
The campaigns do have their fair share of issues, Halo 1 for instance has some odd environmental glitches with some backround geomatry in new graphics mode. Halo 2 has NPC's that sometimes don't follow the player when they should and some NPC's aswell no longer Dual Wield when they should aswell. In addition you can't hear NPC chatter/comms from a distance like the Heretic Leader, Johnson, and Half Jaw unless if your in close proximity. Music volume is more muted in classic mode compared to the original game and while it's not a bug I do wish we could use the classic music while in Anniversary mode in Halo 2 like in the first game.
Halo 3 also has a brightness issues and Halo 4 has incorrect lighting in one cinematic and a majorly incorrect QTE button prompt at the end.

The netcode is reportidly messed up in Halo 1's co-op like in the original anniversary release (I had no issues with it in MCC but it probably is an issue for some) Halo 2 has major desync and disconnection issues in co-op especially on Quarantine Zone and Halo 3 suffers major framerate issues in co-op that did not excist for most players on the original release.

Halo 4's co-op netcode seems to work fine for the most part, probably because it's the newer game in the collection.

I hope all of these bugs aswell as player customization (IE, mix and match armor, Emblems, missing Halo 4 armors/skins, ect) and the UI are addressed, but we'll see.
 
If it was something that more testing could've fixed, then why couldn't they fix it years after the game shipping? Conversely, if it's proven to be so hard to fix, how would more pre-release testing have helped?

post release fixes require dedicating resources towards that fix.

It sounds like they got it more or less to where it's "good enough" and abandoned it until now.

"More testing" is never the answer. "complete testing" is the answer. But since there is no way to quantify every possible test scenario with 100% certainty, especially in complex systems, you have to agree upon a test scope and execute it. Sometimes there are just things nobody notices.
 

rokkerkory

Member
It surely sounds like large architecturally changes were needed, not some minor bugs or s/w fixes. They probably should have done a much more iterative rollout of HMCC, like tackle 1-2 games at a time then keep on adding content and more games in subsequent releases.
 
They left it unpatched until now because they have a new console coming it's that's simple.
Makes total sense when the update is coming in 2018 and the X is like two weeks out /s

Wonder if they should have kept it quiet and just dropped the update one day, reception would have been better.
 

nekkid

It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan.
It surely sounds like large architecturally changes were needed, not some minor bugs or s/w fixes. They probably should have done a much more iterative rollout of HMCC, like tackle 1-2 games at a time then keep on adding content and more games in subsequent releases.

The beauty of hindsight.

It should have gone into an early access program, really.
 
They left it unpatched until now because they have a new console coming it's that's simple.

"Hey, y'know the broken game we just put out that has helped shipped tons of Xbox One consoles and that everyone is pissed at us for releasing and now they're chanting 'Halo is dead' all the time?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Let's leave it unpatched, even though we have the ability to, just in case the higher ups decide to put out a mid-generation console upgrade 4 or so years from now. That way we can market this as a pseudo-launch title or something for it."

Sorry, but what a fucking uninspired, nonsensical, and edge-lord tier response.
 
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