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More of your questions answered, dodged, or put to rest forever. If there's one thing I love, it's evasive answers! And yelling at cheats. Get all that and more, inside.

<toggledisplay> Posted by Frankie at 5/20/2005 4:03 PM PDT

Lots of questions this week. E3 has been a big distraction for all of us, but now things are finally starting to settle down. Cheating is down (it still exists) and folks are antsy to get some new maps. Me? I'm just relaxing under the bath with some marzipan.

A hot chick asks,

Does the delay of the retail pack mean a delay for the downloadable version of the Maptacular Pack?

Yep. The main reason for us holding the downloadable version for that extra week is so that we can match up all the iterations of autoupdate, matchmaking playlist changes and so on. The maps themselves are done, so we're now in the land of retail shipping, matchmaking tuning and so on. Sorry to keep dragging it out. The reason the retail pack slipped was that we found a problem during the final test pass (which is what the final test pass is for, so I suppose it worked).

Aaron asks,

Bill Gates said you guys were working on Halo 3 in Time Magazine. If you deny this, or try to talk your way around it, you're basically saying he's a jerk. So is he? Is he a jerk?

No, he's awesome. Seriously. I once asked him if he had underwater speakers in his pool and he totally didn't have me killed for insolence. And for the record, he does. His subaquatic sound system is better than my terrestrial one.

Bungo asks,

When are you going to take the banshee out of Battle Rifles on Ascension?

We realize it's a pain in the ass, and we're taking it out during the next playlist update. Which will likely be timed to coincide with the new maps.

Lots of peeps demand to know,

Why are people quitting all the time? And what can you do to stop it? Can you ban them?

This is a tough one. We can't ban people for quitting, because we can't force them to play. It's annoying, it's lame, but it's not cheating and we're not in charge of their games. It's human nature. They don't like a map, they quit. They don't like losing, they quit. They got off to a bad start, they quit. We ARE looking at ways to mediate the problem, but a good example of our dilemma is this: If you were playing, and your wife went into labor, you quit and you get back and we've banned you from matchmaking? You're pissed! Not only that, but now you have a BABY. Which requires feeding and probably wants to go to a party school to do some binge drinking. .

Crinkles asks,

Why do I keep getting Warlock more than say Turf or Sanctuary or Containment ?

Simple statistics. There's weighting built in – Warlock shows up a lot because almost everyone has it, and it's suitable for the more commonly played game types. That weighting will change when the next map pack is available and eventually when all the maps are free. In the interim, the best thing about Warlock if you don't like it, is that the games are always very short.

Swimmer61 asks,

Assuming Xbox 360 has backward compatibility (I realize this is definitely not confirmed yet), would I be able to play the Halo 2 campaign without the renders popping? I loved the campaign, especially the portion where MC was on Earth, but seeing the cutscenes load while I watched them kinda ruined the story for me, because rather than being immersed in the story (Bungie's goal, I believe) I was distracted. I work at a game store, and many customers I've spoken with share this opinion about single-player Halo 2.

That's an interesting question. It looks (according to our muckety-mucks) like the 360 will in fact be backward compatible and if it is, folks will definitely be playing Halo 2 on it. Thing is, we're almost certainly not going to revisit the 360 code. We're already too busy working on our next project. The pop-up was one of those compromises we had to make to ensure the nearly-zero loading times for the game. The alternative – no popping and lots of loading, was actually much less palatable. To change or fix that, would take significant resources away from our new stuff, and I very much doubt we'd do that. And from what I understand, contrary to internet swirling, you would simply put your Halo 2 disc in a 360 and then play it. You wouldn't have to re-purchase some kind of 360 special edition version.

Anonymous Coward asks,

Is boosting cheating? And will I get banned for it?

Yes. As a matter of fact, you were actually stupid enough to include your Gamertag in this message, but by the time I'd checked, you had already been banned for matchmaking forever, because you'd already served out a seven day suspension and learned nothing from it. We're banning like crazy now, because we have better tools for detecting it. Boosting, for the non-cheaters amongst you, is the practice of "fixing" games so you play with your similarly idiotic buddy and artificially increase each others' rank. It sticks out like a sore thumb in our system kids. So QUIT DOING IT. And also, quit whining to me about your banning. I don't care. I look at the stats for every whiner email I get and they ALWAYS turn out to be a cheat. "It was my brother….waaah." Well, even if it was your alleged brother, your account is being used to ruin everyone's experience. So bye-bye.

Frosty something asks,

I was just banned for no reason...Why? I don't know I logged on and BAM cant play till a day later and no reason why either. I haven't done anything wrong except play the game and waste my money on Xbox live service. I don't have tolerance for this kind of inconvenience especially when i didn't do anything to deserve it. Please explain to me in some sort of a sarcastic or idiotic way like you answer all of your other questions with why i was banned.

We didn't ban you. Xbox Live did. Most likely because of reporting from the Xbox Live feedback system. How's your language and attitude on Live?

CrossNatty D asks,

Colossus. Love the board but why do you only have one sniper on it .... it seems whoever is the lucky one to be close is the one who rules the board .... think about it make it even and have each side have a snipe ... you do that on a little board called Ascension.

I like that you call levels "boards." As if it were Galaxians. Folks also used to call them "sheets." The answer to your question is that with the inclusion of battle rifles and powerful grenades, it's hard to hang onto the sniper rifle for any length of time. I have not been owned by the sniper on Colossus since the update. .

Alex 135 asks,

I was playing TS and admittedly only got 2, I got completely outclassed by everyone in the game. My team mates said that they'd leave feedback and get me banned for being bad in that one game. Can they do that?

Nope.

.

Tenebrae asks ,

You've said in the past that the retail disc with all the new maps will include some extras. What about those of us that paid for the new maps through xbox live? any chance that there might be a content download available to us early worms that will include those things?

There won't be a download through Xbox Live for those extras, but it is possible we might make them available on Bungie.net one day. Don't hold your breath, however. They'd be enormous files.

.

Ben asks,

When I sign in it shows my old gamer tag. I would like it to be my gamer tag that I recently changed two weeks ago.

It's permanently connected to your Passport account, and it's a minor pain in the butt, but you can do it here:

Instructions on how to fix your Gamertag.

Farnsworth asks ,

I am one of three friends making a knock-off of red vs blue, called Spartans vs Elites, and we plan to make Terminal one of our main levels, but we need to know if Terminal will support the Banshee or heavy vehicles, and if it will allow for more than one light vehicle, especially on the train tracks. Also, when will there be pictures on your website for the other maps. Thanks for your time, and for making this great game.

In custom games, it supports pretty much everything. Right now, for matchmaking, it's scheduled to have Ghosts, a Hog, a Wraith and turrets. No Banshee. You can get vehicles on the tracks, but it takes some fancy driving.

.

And finally, Deanero totally failed to ask what Mister CHief's favorite food was. Easy.

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