Over the past week, we’ve been playing with you, reviewing feedback as we tune existing experiences, and also preparing to deliver new ones. Today, we’ll talk about recent and upcoming game updates, as well as brand new content that will soon be on the way. Welcome to the weekly update, where we’ll talk about all of this and more.

PLAYLIST UPDATES & ADDITIONS

Just a few hours ago, the latest Halo 5: Guardians playlist update went live. Thanks to your community votes, Shotty Snipers is available this weekend, and it’ll be around until the early morning hours (pacific time) on Monday. Jump into the playlist to enjoy a chaotic mix of long and close range combat as well as some increased XP rewards.

But this playlist update doesn’t stop there. We’ve made a few additional changes based on your feedback from this past week, starting with the removal of Orion from all playlists. We’ve pulled the map from matchmaking in order to patch some exploits and make some additional improvements before re-adding it to appropriate playlists. Next, based on feedback regarding map variety and rotations, we’ve added 15 additional map / game type combinations to existing playlists.

We’ve also made some additional matchmaking changes in today’s update. The first of these was an update to the “One or more members of your fireteam has high latency to the dedicated server” error message. Previously, this message blocked players in error, preventing you from playing with the other player(s), and we’ve now removed this restriction. Also, we’ve been keeping an eye on feedback from international players regarding Warzone matchmaking, and found that we were a bit too aggressive in filtering players during matchmaking. After reviewing the current parameters, we’ve made adjustments that will allow Warzone matchmaking to not only allow players to find matches quicker and easier, but also allow for improved matchmaking for players across the globe, thanks to updated searching parameters that also better prioritize players in your region. Today, thanks to your reports, we were able to confirm that the changes did indeed improve matching for players across multiple regions. We need to do some additional tests to ensure that the changes don’t negatively impact any playlists, so we’ve temporarily disabled the changes, and will be re-adjusting the parameters once these changes are verified.

In addition to the other items mentioned last week, the team is also hard at work preparing updates for things like Warzone Assault tuning tweaks (more on that with design next week), updating SWAT respawn time to 3 seconds and turning off SWAT friendly fire, CSR tuning tweaks, Seasons & seasonal rewards, actively monitoring and updating ban thresholds, and more. Also, we know many of you are excited to get you Teishin Raikou Armor set, but may not have received yet – don’t you worry. We’re tracking all eligible players, and will roll these out once we’re able to process all of the player data – there are lots of you. We’ll be taking about these updates and plenty more in the weeks to come.

But now – onto the reason many of you may have joined us today. The new stuff. Continue reading →