‘Halo: Master Chief Collection’ Getting Another Patch, Infection Playlist

Developer 343 Industries hasn’t given up on fixing Halo: The Master Chief Collection for the Xbox One yet. The studio announced Sunday that a new content update (aka patch) is in development while work on Halo 5 is ongoing. Additionally, new playlists are also being added to the shooter’s multiplayer mode.

The problems with Halo: The Master Chief Collection are not as bad as they were in the months immediately after launch, but issues still linger. Sadly, the recent Halo Championship Series was marred by match delays and restarts, though they partly appeared to be a problem with Xbox LIVE causing disconnects at the time. However, a previous online tournament was also delayed because of issues.

Details on what fixes that 343 Industries is specifically aiming at in The Master Chief Collection was not revealed. However, Community Manager Andy “Bravo” Dudynsky did imply that the top issues from the community will be addressed.

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“The MCC team continues to work on the next content update for the game,” Dudynsky explained. “We’re continuing to keep a very close eye on your feedback on Waypoint, Twitter, r/Halo and elsewhere, and prioritizing items within the next update based on said feedback. Look for more details as we get closer to the release.”

This thread in the Halo Reddit forum lists numerous issues still lingering in the game. Most concerning for the community are the ones involving matchmaking such as being forced to perform a hard reset on the Xbox One before being able to do any sort of matchmaking and friends being kicked from a party or not finding a match at all.

Other troublesome issues include matchmaking taking several minutes to find players and the lack of post-match lobbies forcing players to start a fresh search all over again. The problems aren’t limited to PVP though as co-op stability is a question and players are still reporting that campaign progress is being reset.

It will be interesting to see which Halo: The Master Chief issues 343 Industries will be able to successfully address in the next content update. On the bright side, the recently released “Action Sack” playlist proved to be a success and more popular game modes are returning in the next round of playlist updates to the game.

“The playlist team continues to work on future updates, and it’s quite likely that we’ll be talking more about things like Infection in the coming weeks,” Dudynsky wrote. “It’s also quite likely that I will continue to try and persuade the playlist team to put in a Head-to-Head playlist, and that they’ll continue to say “maybe” after a long hesitative pause.”

“Infection” is, of course, the custom Zombie mode that was started as a custom gametype by players in Halo 2. It was later that it became an officially supported mode in Halo 3 and Halo: Reach before being evolved into “Flood” for Halo 4.

At the start of the mode, a couple of players are chosen as “Alpha Zombies” and are equipped with Energy Swords. They then try to infect the other players while the uninfected attempt to survive by killing the Zombies, running, and hiding. The winner is the player that is the “Last Man Standing.”

[Images via Halo Waypoint]