Chronique:Halo Bulletin 30/11/2011

30 novembre

Original

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It’s not five o’clock in the morning, but the conversation is still boring.

Welcome to the last Halo Bulletin of November, where, for the first time ever, I’m going to attempt to be helpful. Don’t get too excited, though, because I’m still going to tell entirely too many bad jokes, laugh hysterically at every single one of them, and then snort obliviously while everybody attempts to avoid eye contact. I’ve learned to just go with it. You probably should, too.

The bulk of today’s Bulletin consists of tips and tricks for making the most of your Halo experience (Open your NAT!) (Turn off motion smoothing!) (Install the game to your hard drive!). However, before we dive into that rather fascinating topic, we should first touch on next month’s Halo: Reach Matchmaking update. If I don’t, the Matchmaking Systems Team gentleman who so kindly compiled this information for you just may kill me. I know that sounds good right about now, but I’m begging for your mercy because I actually have some tasty tidbits to share with you, one of them focusing on those addictive little things commonly referred to as cR.

I do believe your ears perked up a bit when you read that. Well, either that, or you’re just excited to see me. If I was a betting woman, I’d put my credits on the farmer. I mean, the former. Speaking of which….

Daily Credit Cap – We’re raisin’ it.

Reach was released on September 14, 2010, and hopefully, over the last 14 months, you’ve experienced your fair share of ranking up. If you have, you’re probably one of the higher levels at this point in your Reach career, meaning you earn more credits per game than people of a lower level. In addition to the number of credits you get for individual games, you also have the opportunity to earn credits through Daily, Weekly, and, now, Custom Challenges. While it’s nice to rake in more of those shiny virtual coins, this also means your chances of hitting the daily credit cap are greater than when you initially started playing. We want you to be rewarded for the blood, sweat, and tears you’re pouring into your online battles, so we’re raising the daily credit cap. Expect this change to go live with the December matchmaking update.

Playlist Menu – We’re reorderin’ it.

Because the people in charge of organizing the Halo: Reach online menu like to confuse you, they decided to reorder both the primary categories and the playlists within them. That team claims the reordering stems from a concentrated effort to provide assistance with finding the playlists users want to play, but, really, who believes that? Anyway, for those of you who like to be fully prepared, the categories will soon be in the following order:

Basically, it’s alphabetical order. Except it’s not.

Moving on.

Matchmaking Playlist – We’re updatin’ it.

Since community-submitted maps are sometimes mixed in with developer-created maps, occasionally the options on the voting screen are so foreign that you feel like you’ve taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque. We’ve addressed that, along with several other things, in December’s matchmaking playlist update. Read on for the nitty-gritty.

• Team Objective, Squad Slayer and Multi Team updated to TU settings.

TU game types are our standard Reach Matchmaking settings with the Title Update changes. Those changes are: damage bleed enabled, modified reticle bloom, sword block removed, Armor Lock modified, and Active Camo modified.

• TU Beta updated to be ZB Slayer.

The Beta category is a place where we can develop and experiment with new playlists, game types, options, and settings. So you can expect this category to stick around and be updated regularly with different experiences.

• Zero Bloom secondary weapon updated to be an Assault Rifle rather than a Pistol.

• Premium Battle removed.

We’ve adjusted the Matchmaking algorithm to match players who have DLC with other players who have DLC more often than in the past. We’ve also upped the weighting for DLC in our playlists so that you’ll see the DLC in your voting options more frequently. Also, remember that all of the Anniversary maps have been added to the majority of the playlists. The combination of these things means that you’re going to be able to enjoy your premium DLC in Matchmaking much more often than ever before.

If you would like to continue playing the game types and maps featured in this particular playlist after December’s Matchmaking update goes live, here’s a handy-dandy cheat sheet to get you started on replicating that experience.

Slayer – Visit Team Slayer, Squad Slayer, and Big Team Battle, where DLC has been weighted to show up frequently. Objective – Visit Team Objective and Big Team Battle, where DLC has been weighted to show up frequently. Invasion – Visit the Invasion playlist, where Invasion Breakpoint has been set to show up frequently in slot one.

• BTB voting options updated so that a developer-created map will always show up in slot one. We also rearranged and reweighted voting options (including new DLC).

• Team Slayer voting options updated so that a developer-created map will always show up in slot one. We also rearranged and reweighted voting options (including new DLC).

• Pistol tweaked to return to pre-TU behavior in TU game types.

There was a slight variance between the damage output of the DRM and the Pistol. To bring them closer, we tweaked the Pistol to do slightly less damage in the TU game types. Four shots to the body and one to the head will kill the player now, as will seven to the body. The one small difference is that where four body shots would pop your shields previously, it will not now. That’s okay, though, as shield pop means significantly less in TU game types because damage bleed is active. In other words, a fifth headshot will still result in a kill.

The raising of the daily credit cap, the reordering of the categories and playlists, and the December matchmaking playlist update are all expected to go live next week.

Now, before I fill your brain with more words than you can even begin to imagine, I thought I’d first decorate it with some pictures. Since November is officially coming to a close, it seems only appropriate that we usher it out with our resident Movember participants. They’re a rather handsome bunch, but I’m sure you’ll come to that conclusion yourself after looking at their numerous hairy shots. I mean, fabulous shots. Yeah, that’s it.

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