The Tragedy of Halo MCC 

The fans moved on. It sucks to see one of the most well known game franchises be like this but hey, if great things never fall then the Roman empire would still be around.

Being a halo fan is such a rollercoaster

One thing about MCC that REALLY bugs me is the issue where the game crashes during coop campaign missions, which for me always seems to be the Halo 2 mission Sacred Icon

The Halo Waypoint forums died from low population which was caused by tyrannical moderators throwing permanent bans around for the smallest infractions or for no reason at all. A few months before it was shutdown Hermit banned half of the participants in a large thread over nothing with no reason given. There's no appeal, and even the Discord has now adopted the same operational "standards".

This is why I've always wanted strong energy to be put towards an official Bot Mode for MCC. I knew the days would come when the population stiffens out, but with a bot mode you can still replay and enjoy the gameplay experience for eternity.

It's annoying how many bugs mcc still has. Sometimes my buddies and I have issues joining each-other's lobbies. It almost feels as if someone is somehow on a different version. Like we can see the other person, but invites don't work, the join button is grayed out. Sometimes it takes a few restarts to have the option. In pvp we still deal with crashes and freezing all the time, it just seems completely random when it happens. And then campaign co-op is laggy no matter how good the internet is. I've tried different locations different internet speeds, different computers always the same issues. I really wanted to play mods with my sister who is a big reach fan, but it's either insanely laggy, or it just crashes. If 343 left split screen in the game, I would just do that, but nooo, have to remove it for some unknown reason. One friend is a massive 343 nerd, read all the books that kind of thing. He just loves Halo infinite, and wants me to move over to it. I don't want to, it's insanely sweaty, and my BR randomly stops shooting when I pull the trigger. Like I would have half a clip left, and it just doesn't shoot, and it would cause me to loose my fights. Even if it was fixed, I don't enjoy infinite, it's cool they added AI to forge and all, but I don't enjoy the gameplay. I just want to play the originals with mods in peace with my friends and family, but I just can't get it to work. I'm constantly told oh 343 is doing great with infinite, they are doing better then Bungie. But every time I play any Halo game I am constantly reminded about why I despise this company. Oh and few years before they shut down the 360 servers, Halo 3 was mostly fine lag wise, Halo 4 was completely unplayable. It would just disconnect from Xbox live, even though the Xbox was still connected to Xbox. It was weird. You would have like less then 5 minutes to find a match in Halo 4 before you get kicked from Xbox live servers, and you had to restart the game to have another chance. So 343 just always sucked at anything requiring internet, it just pisses me off how they had to ruin the originals with their crappy service.

Launch single handedly killed my friends’ interest in halo as a whole. Been a lonely decade

My group primarily plays Halo CE. One of the big nagging issues that has recently killed part of our group is the constant “connecting session” only to be booted to “leaving matchmaking” a few seconds later. Sometimes it will do this over, and over. It gets frustrating! There are some other issues that plague CE, but this one seemed to cause our group to crumble.

Nailed literally every point. The games launch sucked, they salvaged it under pressure of killing a flagship IP, gimped the progression because battlepass shit was trendy, pushed out challenges that grant players peanuts for nothing, ran rampant with content revisionism, smashed issues by creating more, ignored the community for years, and then when they couldn't be money predators they slowed development to a painful pace and release nameplates forever pretending people are ok with the shitheap they left behind. I love halo, i do not love 343.

Thank you for making the future attempt on hosting some lobbies on the MCC considering how lonely this game can get sometimes even with CGB. As somewhat of a tryhard who resides on the CGB, it's one of the only reasons I play this game but I do commemorate parts of the community who try and make the space more fun and less sweaty, even if limited to Reach. I do find it sad how this game has fallen so far into "obscurity" with such a famous franchise but I'll always say this partial buggy game is better than the infinite cashcow.

I feel like since the decline of Infinite Halo as a whole has been a dying brand that Microsoft cares less and less about. Like, you know it's bad when Xbox's equivalent of Mario isn't even featured in game showcases.

When MCC changed the matchmaking algorithm, it went from fairly close matches overnight to one sided domination. I reckon my loss rate is about 75-90% because the game matches me with potatoes for "balance". And if I want to win a 'social' game, I need to play like I'm looking to win a tournament final. At some point I just stopped playing multiplayer because it's not fun to get put on a team of players of a completely different skill level, to the point where 4v1 is actually MORE BALANCED. No one has fun. It's a 50-10 win for one team, the players on my team get crushed and probably rage quit. I got thrown into a hopeless match. I used to have the option of matchmade social games as a casual thing to relax, and ranked games for a more competitive experience. This changed overnight with the algorithm change. The population did not change massively within this time, it is purely due to incompetent matchmaking, with skill deltas far too high. H2/H3 only allowed players within a certain level range to match, e.g. 50+40 vs 2x 45s. MCC will allow something like a 50 and a 10 to match up against 2 40s, and then act surprised this "balanced" match is anything but.

Let me know if I'm wrong, if you pre ordered mcc back in 2014, did you get a beta key for halo 5? I remember being on the hype train for mcc, I bought the Xbox one and I got the halo 5 beta. I wonder if mcc was done poorly on purpose so the pop count on halo 5 would stay high? Idk

This ranting about Halo Infinite feels weird since Infinite Season 5 has almost universally been praised

Yeah the biggest nail in the coffin for MCC for me is being unable to play Invasion anymore. That is my favorite mode across all of Halo... and I'm sure my high rank is making it harder to find matches for.

Most Halo fans wouldn't know a good game if it slapped them in the face. Reach was a goddamn masterpiece. That being said, I was livid over the state of MCC. It was the most highly awaited launch in game history, for me. And 343 bungled it.

The fact that 343 knows a server browser would fix the public multiplayer problems and after nearly a decade still refuses to replace matchmaking with one speaks volumes.

I feel like the collection was pandering to the halo 3 crowd because they added halo online maps, most of the seasons were focused on halo 3 and some others and we never got an season focused on halo 2 at all.

One of the main issues that is plaguing mcc right now is aimbot cheaters using chronus or xim, they be no scoping hitting all their shots with sniper rifles and I’m getting tired of it. Also people making Smurf accounts are another issue as well.

343 not stabbing Halo to drink it's blood for two seconds challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)

For 343, the upkeep of their games is transactional. They've basically stated as much recently when talking about how they unlocked "cross-core" customization (should have been available since launch), therefore it's justified for them to increase the cost of cosmetics in their store. Cosmetics that were already expensive to the point of nausea. If you're not paying more and more and more, they're not fixing shit. It's slimy and pisses me off. 343 needs to be dissolved and Id Software needs to take over. At least they know how to make a competent shooter.

Another issue is when you play BTB on Halo Reach 95% of the time the game forces you to play Breakpoint, Highlands, or Tempest. It's like 343i has a hatred for anything related to Bungie.

This blows. I hate 343 man and I don’t care what they do for the community they always to pull the rug from under us and the big halo RU-vidrs don’t help when they are always screaming HALO IS BACK GUYS WOO

They should enable xp gain for mods because the mods are held back by having to decide if you want to grind or experience new content

I'm not surprised Reach was controversial when it released and the things you listed are the things I hate in Reach but it did have many good stuff in it. Can't say anything positive about Halo 4, 5, and even Infinite.

Eldirito. There was a good halo re release we just ignored it

YO the only explanation is they WANT Halo to fail while still milking it dry until it actually does Its the only explanation

It peaked over 5000 players in the last 24 hours. Sure it's not as impressive at it's all time peak, being 93,305 players. However this a 5 year old game, and the highest average player count is made up of dedicated players. TCM is dying. Kkfo is dead. etc

I'm gonna say there is probably a bit that is Microsoft fault. For Microtransactions, Reporting Systems. For Minecraft and probably other franchises. I Give up on really playing those games mostly for the multiplayer part. I just go single player. I have a bad feeling about Microsoft in general. I've been switching more to linux not just for gaming but also for browsing the web. Never intended to get Office. And Hate Onedrive for forcing me to use it. Only uses for windows is just for multiplayer games due to anti cheat. One thing is great for Linux or Windows is Emulation, and I'm happy it exists. Because When The Xbox 360 or Original evolves no matter how long it takes. It probably will emulate Online Servers for Hosting and We are able to play Halo Multiplayer again. I've seen that RPCS3 Got a Multiplayer online feature and seen other emulators for other consoles as well with that feature, if they have it. It must mean it's possible for Xbox 360/Xbox emulators to have it as well.

Great video man

Time to bring back LAN parties.

what's with competitive mode? doesn't seem to find a single game.

I think everyone is just in the custom browsers nowadays. Much more fun than the matchmaking itself.

Only reason I play halo mcc anymore is because I still have a few achievements to go, Sigils on Valhalla, and laso for halo 2 and halo 4

Halo ce somewhat buggy halo 2 co op me and my friend have to load a mission 4 to 6 times just to finish a mission for example. I boot up halo to play the story not even touch the multiplayer unless I go in with a few friends and we usually play custom games. Glad your bringing up the valid points but let's face it mcc only came to pc because of what 343 did to the mod teams that had given us free halo games.

Wait so what exactly is gateblocking competitive?

so rare to get a good match on reach where the teams are actually fair

Honestly, even if it means that MCC gets bug fixes, new maps / content for H2(A) and H:CE I'd be okay with micro transactions

It's because they don't fix anything and they don't update anything and if they are something it's added only for Spartans or weapons they never added the kids too Xbox

I played halos mp (aside from reach) for the first time on the mcc. I was immediately stomped on. It was unenjoyable. I always heard that halos a social game not a sweatfest. Its honestly disappointing. Also the onboarding of like 5 battlepasses is confusing. Ive always been more of a campaign guy. But its buggy. Not a good look for the future of halo. Bungies dead and 343i is well on its way.

I sometimes hop on to play firefight 😅

The real issue isn’t fixable - halo is old. A huge portion of the gaming community likes new games, and no matter how much Halo is polished up it won’t revive these decade + old games. It reminds me of old school RuneScape, where the majority of the players are in their mid 20s to late 30s. It’s just the audience that originally liked the game in the early 2000s - they’re not bringing in any new players.

Hope they bring H5 arena to MCC. Id pay a full $60 just to have all Halo FPS games available to play on MCC. Cosmetics microtransactions wouldn't bother me. And maybe it's my location but I can find any game pretty much immediately maybe with the exception of H2A.

No kidding 11:29

I just play btb.

They should make the multiplayer not require XBL gold, I’d be playing daily on my Xbox but I’m not going to pay 100$ a year for that I already bought the game multiple times Hell Infinite is free and it doesn’t require XBL Gold Makes no sense to require MCC users on Xbox have gold

Probably because of Halo Infinite they’re moving on.

MCC was broken for nearly 4 YEARS before they got around to fixing it, and re-enabling features from legacy games. Its still unstable to this day. H5G took 3 years to be completed. And Infinite took about 2 or so years to be 'completed'. I don't care what 343 shills say, just because now these games are good doesn't excuse the shit they started as. But they'll also be the ones that say Bungie Halo fans are stuck in the past. No, I'm stuck in the era of "Games were complete and functioned at launch"

Halo will live forever...in our memories. So damn sad man.

The fans moved on because 343 has made it abundantly clear they have no care for Halo and will continue letting us down. Which is absolutely insane because if they put even a little more effort in, they could make so much fucking money

One of my many issues with MCC, one that you mentioned towards the end of the video, is playing the same maps over and over. I really wish map voting was still a thing, even in Infinite. I’m tired of playing fucking Citadel and those garish, shitty, “Reclaimer Era” 343 maps they added to H3. These games average like 20 different maps, yet I’m playing the same 3 - 5.

I REALLY miss the days of Halo 2/Halo 3 online. I had so many awesome friends that I would play with/communicate with (in lobbies, not parties!) on the daily.. The game play was A++, I feel like a fucking old man but I just wish I could relive that shit.. Screw you 343, I miss OG Bungie

can't even find a single match for halo reach. only halo 3 ever gets matches now. We need custom games browser mod support or mod support on consoles if the game is to thrive still. Its just so sad.

This right here! I’m glad there’s at least a handful of honest RU-vidrs out there talking about 343i’s crap. The amount of people talk about how MCC is totally working fine and everyone needs to quit complaining should be banned sued for false advertising. MCC is more broke now than it’s was two years ago. Blows my mind.

We just need to let Halo go, and remember it the way it was best.

I love MCC, but I stopped playing last year. I was in the middle of a match and I accidentally ran over a teammate with a Ghost. I was _immediately_ kicked from the game and got a warning message, then when I backed out to the main menu I saw I had a short "ban" where I had to wait 7 minutes to join any new match. I don't know if the game itself is overly sensitive to griefing or if it was something else, but after that I gave up. I'm not going to play if accidental friendly fire can get me kicked from a match.

I started a gaming evening every third Saturday with friends. We were playing MCC. Every game we played, someone lagged out, and was banned. Hard to keep people interested when it’s still broken.

The thing that kills me that 343i shouldn't have done is them discontinuing the much needed content updates to MCC after a decade of them wasting time and not regularly coming out with updates and patches to the collection way earlier and coming out efficiently. Supposedly from what I heard, someone from 343i on the MCC team already has moved on into the infinite team SMH.

Still tons of broken or needlessly altered features from the original release. Not even counting the known issues support hasn't fixed. And a ridiculous grind to catch up on the seasonal content. Great stuff.

Man... people really do like to say "Halo is back"

Fortunately for me since I’m a weirdo who for whatever bizarre reason doesn’t really care about multiplayer unless it’s co-op/custom games with people I know, never cared about customization, and mostly just play campaign/Firefight I’m doing good for the most part. Especially now that mod support is a thing. I’m off in my little corner with a smoke mask and a fire extinguisher just in case the flames approach me as everyone else is screaming in a burning building. Hopefully, these issues can get fixed. But, unless Microsoft tells them to I don’t think 343 will do much. Part of me is excited to see where the Halo show will go next purely because I’m drawn to dumpster fires. I remember early on I was thinking they could do something akin to the Star Wars Special Edition edits where they’d reshoot some scenes to have Chief wearing his armor/helmet (turns out taking off his helmet was the least of our concerns😂), rearranging or outright scrapping certain scenes for the sake of flow, and fixing up the CGI by making that crazy guy a Jackal like he was supposed to be in that Cole Protocol book (Squidward’s house on his desk is absolutely mandatory to keep🗿) and making the weapons effects look better. Keep in mind this was before they really jumped the shark and the show became universally hated overnight. Before that people had really mixed opinions and tended to flip flop based on the quality of individual episodes. Now I know it’s so bad that you’d need to retcon so much that you might as well reboot/scrap the whole thing. What they should’ve done was have it be a mini series that juggles the plots of CE, The Flood book, and Fireteam Raven with flashbacks to stuff like Contact Harvest and Fall of Reach/Reach the game. The separate universe thing would’ve been fine if the show was mostly faithful and did some good things like rearranging events to make things flow better, making connections where none existed previously to better tie different events in, and by adding content from the other games/media where appropriate to make the conflict feel more fleshed out. Sadly, that makes sense and the universe stopped making sense a while ago (maybe Hasbro refusing to cancel My Little Pony gen 5 at the behest if Chris Chan retroactively messed up reality. Now the entire timeline is in chaos😂).

Season 5 and later seasons will not revive halo infinite to any point that it makes the profit MS wanted on infinite. With the 343 layoffs and the acquisition of Activision, I forsee Halo going into dormancy for some years with minimal support to infinite and mcc, with MS shifting to cod as their main fps title. MS will then either sell Halo, or will attempt a Doom 2016 style comeback with either a reorganized 343, or a completely new studio.

I still cant play co-op with my friend Halo CE, fuck me i guess for wanting to play a game in co-op

as someone who has been playing halo since halo 1 on the og xbox, its been a ride being a halo fan. I never want to see this franchise die, but I want to see the mcc live on for a long time. The online parties with friends and doing the campaigns together was such an experience. I have noticed the try hards in social lobbies and yeah it just pushes me away from the game. I need to find some friends who want to play this together, run customs, and just have a good time.

My friends and I got into halo during the 2019 mcc revival era. That game really helped us get through the pandemic. Played all the campaigns and multiplayer for the first time. Unfortunately it’s really difficult to find a match in 2023. When you do find a match it’s almost always a sweat fest. It’s really sad to see this game die since it got me through such a hard time.

This is why I still have my original Xbox console and 360. At some point, these games will simply disappear, then, that will be the only way to play the campaigns.

Sbmm is the main reason I stoped playing mcc

I lit only play the Campaign for nostalgia and relive my childhood dream of flying the pelican occasionally Im a simple man.

I've said it for about 2 years now, all I'd need for me to return to MCC is an updated map rotation. I got so bored with the same BTB maps, there's a lot that were in the OG titles (particularly reach as that's what I mostly play) that aren't in the games map rotation and they NEEEEED to come back. I can't remember the last BTB game I've had on simple Hemorrhage.

Had MCC worked from launch and H3 got a PROPER remaster, the Halo community would undoubtedly be in a vastly different state today.

I've been enjoying the Halo MCC mods. But I do occasionally want to play Halo CE multiplayer, which is hard to find because most players are on Halo 3.

Halo 3 mcc port is for sure a nightmare. Crashes, terrible SBMM, and hit detection issues always ruin the fun for me. What makes my personal situation worse is that I have never played the multiplayer of halo ce-3, just reach and a tiny bit of 4, 5, and infinite. So I’ll never properly experience the glory days of halo. Although, since I have been going against veterans a lot, I will say that it is definitely helping my skill level improve, but other than that, it really stinks man.

I'm not gonna lie. I hate this hyper cynical view of the MCC. As a kid who grew up playing Halo CE non stop from 2004 to 2010 when I finally got an old Xbox and a copy of Halo 2, I loved being able to play all the games I missed out through my teenage years. I loved finally being able to experience the Halo online community, the new and creative maps and finally being able to finish the fight. IDK about everyone else, but I payee 40 bucks for nearly 300 hours of entertainment. I even got to relive my chilhood memories of Halo CE and enjoying noticing little details I couldn't make out back in 2004 with my potato PC and the kinda bad port we got. You are all trying to play the new games like you used to play the old ones, which you can't cause it was a different point in your life 20 years ago. You are not supposed to just feel the same way you did back then, but you can enjoy the beautiful memories, and I for one am thankful to Microsoft for giving me that change, I won't ever like Halo 4 or 5, but I got to enjoy the rest of the Halo saga (even the twin stick shooters).

I'm just jumping back into multi, guys please don't leave yet 😆

is that h2 sanctuary mod on steam workshop?

Dont play it that much now since theres nothing to unlock and hard to find players these days

Finally someone calling out the shitty progression system instead of praising it just for being free and not time limited

I was wondering why I couldn't find a match the other day.

I don't thinmk it was technical failures or financial shortcomings... I think 343 abandoned MCC due to sheer spite. Other then my angry comment, not directed at the OP. but at 343. This was a good video... you earned my sub bud!. truly first rate work!

It’s not dying, it’s just old. It’s still fun and nostalgic. There’s only one thing I want and thanks to infinite, it’s now possible. I want forge ai for 3 and reach!

I suck at first person shooters in general but always tried as hard as I could in HALO 2 big team battle and managed to get rank 32 before lobbies were crowded with bots. Big team battle capture the flag and assault in halo 2 will seemingly forever remain my most beloved video game experiences.

If 343 wants to recover any shred of credibility or integrity they should stop everything they're doing and focus on fixing the MCC. No Halo 7, no Halo Infinite DLC, keep your promise. And it would also help rekindle interest in Halo again. If they released a massive update to MCC that fixed all of these bugs alone that would be great, but what if they also dropped Halo 3 Anniversary alongside it? It would take a long time and a lot of work to do but if they did it would be a massive win. Not just for the community, who would get to have a functioning game, but also for 343, because they finally would have made good on the promise they made when they first announced MCC, but they would have managed to give people an opportunity to revisit Halo 3, and the rest of the series. Give us all a reason to enjoy Halo again.

I knew it was all downhill when Halo stooped low enough to collab with Fortnite for a Master Chief skin DLC

the elephant in the room is 343 releasing mcc on pc where most players use mnk then proceeding to change absolutely nothing regarding input balance. This is a huge factor why mcc playercount is so low on steam. Pretty much the game even if its insane value for money and the titles on it legendary it ls completely unplayable on mnk. U are at a massive dissadvantage in every single title in that game if u are an mnk player. Many people realized that and left. Infinite is the only halo title that mnk isnt a complete joke. Controller is superior but mnk can still do ok there. Pc players look at mcc as just a controller game and then ignore it.

Halo MCC is such a Horrible experience! The Bans are absolutely Horrible!

There is a lot they planned and promised in past that they never got around to and some problems still to fix with the exchange, fomo and no longer obtainable cosmetic items. What they never finished was: full halo reach elite armor customisation, halo ce and 2 4 player co-op. There are further things they could definitely do to get people easily excited for mcc again like importing content from 5 into 4 and 2A and getting 2A and 4 weapons armor and content cross game as they use the most similar engines.

not trying to play in lobbies full of sweats. it needs to bring in new players or die out

MCC needs bots asap

Halo reach was only controversial to internet nerds in forums. The truth is that it’s like the second best selling halo game and had a strong community literally up until the servers got shut down. The idea that halo reach was considered bad by the masses is one held by people who don’t touch grass. It’s the same people who think Halo 2 was controversial. Halo 2 was the best selling game of all time at the time, but yeah a few weirdos in the internet complained about the abiter so I guess the game sucked? Y’all are getting narratives and reality intertwined.

Not to mention bugs on new updates. I was making my way through to getting all 700 achievements. Finished mutiplayer and most campaigns even most LASOs, only missing achievements for Halo 3 campaign and cross game playlists. But since the September 2023 update the achievement "Phantom Hunter" is broken. No progress can be made and no fix has been found since it's broken on 343s side of checking the achievement progress. So I'm stuck having 699 out of 700 until 343 fixes it, IF they ever fix it

I mean, I think you're being a little abrasive. But I also think you are 100% accurate and agree with pretty much everything you've said here. The PC ports were very rushed. And it still baffles me personally how even very basic things like making the Halo 3 weapon skins available in Halo 3 ODST just still hasn't been done. But once I realized that the MCC devs mostly prioritize what they think will bring players back to the game, then most of the all-over-the-place post-launch support the game has been getting started to make a lot more sense to me. It still sucks though.

This man wants change, sign me up. Halo is the game of the people, only we can bring it back.

MCC matchmaking is a radioactive dumpster on fire. Teams of good players enjoy going into social games and farming people who are just trying out MCC on game pass. Not only 343, but apparently many high skilled Halo players want to kill off the population.

The only reason i still have mcc installed is because of the mods.

There ahould have been Mod Support for Consoles. Like seriously. Mods help games live on. Theres no doubt about it. And offline bots when the servers go away

Part of the reason is the broken release both pc and Xbox 343 constantly ruins impressions of both old fans and newcomers

Man i tried to play halo 4 on mcc to give it another go after 12 years and I was amazed of all the glitches in the campaign. No audio, bugged audio, and it looked washed out compared to the original on the 360. It made me sad because i knew that i was playing a worst version of the game and i was playing a better version 12 years ago! You would think they would make their baby and entry into halo perfect! but its been almost 10 years we've had the MCC and co-op is unplayable in halo 3 still and 4 is unplayable. so fucking sad

Another problem with the mcc is that I can't get previous challenge rewards from previous seasons or series and 343 never brought them in the exchange and the rhine armour too, fomo to the extreme

In an era of overly sweaty halo mcc multiplayer in social games, I consider anything even or better a good game. I don't dominate any matches. Yes I realize this is a little competitive but I'm just trying to do good and have a good time. Just seeing that I can still play well and not like trash is enjoyable to me, but it becomes not very enjoyable when it seems like I'm getting a lot of matches going up against players like Mint Blitz (not actually Mint, just players like Mint).

Doesnt help that people keep flooding the custom games browser with clan recruitment and clan game modes