The February update for MCC is bringing some fun additions that many of you have been asking us about for quite some time. This update touches on nearly all areas of the Halo community from casual, to just for fun, all the way up to die-hard competitive.
As part of today’s update, we’ve added a special Valentine’s Day nameplate along with an IP Masking option to hide your IP. On the playlist front, we’re adding Multi Team into Social Matchmaking and a new Microsoft Store 2v2 Series playlist so that you can get some practice in before competing at your local Microsoft Stores. As always, deep in the code there are also a series of bug fixes and some behind the scenes ground work for future playlist updates and content. But before we get into all those tidbits, let’s dive right in and talk about the overhaul that has been done to Social Games and Multi Team, which includes what's easily one of the most fun game types ever made!
SOCIAL GAMES
Yes – Rocket Race is back! This explosively-fun mode will live in Social Matchmaking within the Multi-Team playlist. However, before we start launching ourselves across the universe on our Mongooses (or Mongeese, whichever you prefer), let’s take a closer look at all of the changes to our social offerings.
Late last year the new Match Composer was added into MCC, allowing players to customize their own matchmaking experiences. Since its launch, we have been listening to feedback around what areas players wanted to see changed. After parsing through several months of feedback, we are happy to now bring you an updated Social Games experience, which we hope addresses much of the feedback we’ve received.
The biggest change with this update is a more logical grouping of gametypes based on behavior data, similarity, and player requests. Several of the new additions help account for gametypes people have requested for the Match Composer. We have also heard the want for FFA to come to Match Composer, and although it is not in this update, the team is looking at ways to fill that void for players in the future.
Here are the new groups that have been added to Social Games with the February update:
Flag and Bomb – Attack and defend bases in scenarios involving Flag and Bomb Objectives. Includes Capture the Flag, Assault, and Ricochet.
Zone Control – Capture and control zones on the map to earn points. Includes King of the Hill, Territories, Extraction, and Dominion.
Asset Denial – Attack enemy targets and defend your own. Includes Oddball, VIP, and Regicide.
To help visualize everything currently available within the Match Composer, we’ve provided a full breakdown below. This details all possible options for the various team sizes and which game type selections are applicable in each game..
PLAYER PROTECTION
Over the past several months, we have worked with the community to remove individuals whom are toxic and like to ruin the experience for others. The 343 Pub team recognized that it wasn’t enough just to monitor and ban players who are using nefarious tools to harm other players experiences. So, with this update we are bringing a new feature that will give you the option to hide your IP from players during matchmaking.
Prior to this update, your IP was exposed to anyone in a matchmade game as all voice communication is transmitted over peer-to-peer connections. With the February update, the team has provided a new option to ensure those peer connections are proxied through relays, which will effectively “mask” your direct IP and prevent sharing with individuals you may not trust.
If you have turned on Relay servers and are playing matchmade games, your voice communications in game will be sent via the relay servers and will no longer be exposed to others in the game. Please note that matchmade games make use of dedicated servers while other ways of playing with people (i.e. Custom Games) use Peer-to-Peer networking and still may result in your IP being shared with other players.
If Relays are set to off – your IP will be potentially discoverable in matchmade games
Who and where can players discover your IP in MCC?
Matchmaking: If Relays are set to on, nobody. If Relays are set to off, anyone.
Custom Games: Anyone – these are peer-to-peer run games.
Co-op Campaign: Anyone – these are peer-to-peer games.
Spartan Ops: Anyone – these are peer-to-peer games.
Where do I need to go to turn the Relays on or off?
Server Relays can be turned on or off by navigating to “Options & Career” > “Settings” > “Network.
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