Highlights

  • Halo: The Master Chief Collection receives its first update in seven months, fixing bugs and improving Halo 2's multiplayer.
  • The update resolves issues with video backgrounds resetting, grenade functionality, and multiplayer squads getting stuck.
  • The update also enhances modding tools and eliminates crashes, but it remains uncertain when the next patch will be released.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection has released a new update that fixes common bugs and makes a big improvement to the classic version of Halo 2's multiplayer. This is the first update for Halo: The Master Chief Collection since July of last year.

The Master Chief Collection's July update added plenty of new features by introducing Escalation Slayer and new forge content to Halo 3, a Firefight custom game browser, new custom game settings, and much more. Following the major patch, the now ten-year-old game had not received a new update for almost seven months, until now.

Master Chief over Mass Effect 3 screenshot-1
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The Master Chief Collection's new update massively improves Halo 2's multiplayer by refining hit registration and projectile speed, two issues that had affected the MCC version of the classic game for many years. As for bug fixes, the update fixes the issue of a player's chosen video background resetting when relaunching The Master Chief Collection, another prevalent issue that was affecting many users. Other bug fixes include improved grenade functionality for Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST keyboard-and-mouse users and multiplayer squads no longer becoming stuck after a squad leader leaves the lobby. Additionally, Halo 3's Phantom Hunter achievement should now properly unlock and Cortana's narrative sequences during the Arrival mission should now work as intended.

Halo The Master Chief Collection Cover Image

The new update also introduces some improvements to The Master Chief Collection's modding tools by making scripts in Halo: Combat Evolved maps work for the host and all client players during an online match. Also, a crash that occurred when using the Sapien Structure Painter Tool in Halo 2 Anniversary's Multiplayer Editing Kit should no longer happen. The new update comes in at 1.6 GB on consoles, 1.3 GB on the Microsoft Store App or Xbox PC app, and 300 MB on Steam. 343 Industries did not mention when fans can expect the next patch for The Master Chief Collection, but fans probably shouldn't hold their breath.

A leak from December showed that The Master Chief Collection's developers received a letter thanking them for having "finished the fight" with the game's development. This seemed to suggest that 343's work on the game had mostly concluded, which was also made evident by the long gap in updates between July 2023 and now. It's possible that The Master Chief Collection won't receive major new content for some time, or ever.

Halo Infinite was recently rumored to be one of the Xbox games going cross-platform in the future, which would seem to suggest that The Master Chief Collection might make the jump as well. However, Xbox's flagship franchise going multiplatform would be quite the surprise, and newer leaks make no mention of Halo joining other Xbox exclusives in releasing for PlayStation and Switch.

Patch Notes For The Master Chief Collection's February 2024 Update

DOWNLOAD SIZE BY PLATFORM

  • Xbox consoles: approximately 1.6 GB or less
  • Microsoft Store app or Xbox app on PC: approximately 1.3 GB or less
  • Steam: approximately 300 MB or less

RESOLVED ISSUES AND BUG FIXES

Several of these improvements come from Halo Support tickets submitted by our community. Thank you for playing and please keep submitting tickets!

GLOBAL

  • Players’ selected video backgrounds no longer have a chance to reset when closing and relaunching Halo: The Master Chief Collection.
  • When playing Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST with a mouse and keyboard, pressing the G key will no longer result in the selected grenade type switching.
    • The ‘Previous Grenade’ and ‘Next Grenade’ functions can be bound to the G key if desired.

  • Multiplayer squads will no longer become stuck if the squad leader leaves the lobby during the “Checking for rejoin” state.
    • When this issue occurred prior to this update, squads could recover from this state if the new squad leader backed out of the active search and started a new search. With the fix included in this update, the new leader will inherit the active rejoin check seamlessly.

HALO 2: CLASSIC MULTIPLAYER

  • Improvements to hit registration and projectile speed in online multiplayer matches. For more information on the root cause of the issue and the bug fix that the team implemented, click on the Developer Notes accordion below.

Developer Notes

With this update, we’ve resolved an issue that halved the "hitscan range” of weapons in Halo 2 Classic multiplayer. In Halo games, the term “hitscan” refers to a projectile’s potential to instantly travel and impact its target. Several weapons in Halo 2 will use “hitscan” within given ranges, in other words they will only deal damage instantly when enemies are within a specific range. When enemies are outside of this range, the fired projectiles will need to travel over time to impact their target. This range can be referred to as a “hitscan range”.

To set the stage before diving into this fix further, it’s important to note how games update the “world state” or, in other words, how time progresses in a game. Framerate or frames per second measures how many times per second a game world is rendered, meaning how often a new image depicting the current world state is created and shown to players. Rendering is completed on a player’s console or PC and is therefore dependent on their hardware’s capabilities. Separate from the rendering of the game state, there is a “tick” that determines how often all game systems – including projectile movements – update every second. This tick functions identically for all players across all hardware configurations. For the original version of Halo 2, this tick occurred every 1/30th of a second.

When you fire a weapon in Halo 2, the next tick will capture both your weapon firing and however far the resulting projectile moved along its path within that 1/30th of a second. This is important because, in close range battles, a projectile can impact a target within its initial tick – this is the “hitscan range”. This allows your Xbox or PC to tell the game or server that it hit the target, rather than simply telling the game or server where it was aiming relative to the target. This is much more reliable at ensuring that projectiles which appear to hit on your device actually hit and deal damage in the server’s world state, and therefore deal damage on the other clients connected to the server.

How far a projectile can travel and hit an enemy within its initial tick is determined by its designer-configured projectile speed and how often the ticks occur. The faster the projectile, the longer the “hitscan range”. For example, the Battle Rifle projectile’s ‘Initial Velocity’ is 400 World Units (WU) per second so, when measured against the tick rate of 1/30th of a second, it has a “hitscan range” of 13.333 WU (133.33 feet).

To better align with framerate increases and provide a more consistent online experience, the Master Chief Collection (MCC) increased the tickrate from one tick every 1/30th of a second to one tick every 1/60th of a second. This intrinsically halves the distance a projectile travels in a single tick, which has the unintended consequence of cutting the “hitscan range” in half. Returning to the Battle Rifle example, the increased tick rate reduced the “hitscan range” from 13.333 WU (133.33 feet) to 6.667 WU (66.67 feet). In the multiplayer map Lockout, which has a length of roughly 13 WU (measured from the Sniper spawn to the Battle Rifle spawn), the legacy “hitscan range” for the Battle Rifle just barely fit but the MCC “hitscan range” was too short – until now. This update restored the Battle Rifle’s “hitscan range” to 13.333 WU, as well as restoring the “hitscan ranges” for all other affected weapons.

This difference in tickrates was also causing projectiles in the MCC version of Halo 2 to move slower overall as they were traveling only half the expected distance in each tick. This issue can be summarized as the original version of Halo 2 moving projectiles forward in time by 1/30th of a second whereas MCC moved them forward by 1/60th of a second.

Previously, some community mods have addressed this issue by increasing projectile speeds as a means of emulating the original “hitscan range”. Although this method corrects some of the issues outlined above, it may also introduce new behaviors that differ from the original release of Halo 2. The fix included in this update restores the legacy "hitscan range” and projectile speed without disrupting other sandbox behaviors.

An additional note here about this behavior across Halo titles: the “hitscan range” of the Battle Rifle has fluctuated over time. The values below illustrate the difference in “hitscan range” between each depiction of the Battle Rifle (and the DMR in Halo: Reach) in the Master Chief Collection.

  • Halo 2: 13.333 WU (133.33 feet)
  • Halo 3: 6 WU (60 feet)
  • Halo: Reach’s DMR: 50 WU (500 feet)
  • Halo 4: 50 WU (500 feet)
  • Halo 2: Anniversary: 100 WU (1,000 feet)

HALO 3

  • The Phantom Hunter Achievement can now be unlocked consistently by destroying three Phantoms during the campaign mission The Covenant.
  • Cortana narrative sequences now play as intended in the campaign mission Arrival.

MOD TOOLS

  • Scripts included in maps for Halo: Combat Evolved will now work across the host and all client players in an online multiplayer match.
  • Resolved a crash that occurred when using the Sapien Structure Painter tool in the Halo 2 Anniversary Multiplayer Editing Kit.