Honestly, who still plays Halo 3? A few more tidbits about the Assembly Map Pack after the jump, which Luke says might not come out till the Halo 3 anniversary (That’s only 17 days from now).
Title Update 2
Like we’ve said previously, there’s a bunch of under-the-hood changes in TU2 that will be largely invisible to players. Things like rare occurrences of crashes, server-side support for data collection, making more data available and consumable for internal use – you know, the sort of bullet points that warm engineering loins and sing the rest of us a lullaby.
There are also some “peace of mind” changes that should improve player experiences online in Halo 3. We’ve done a bunch of work to increase our ability to detect cheating. The numbers of bans on the banhammer threads ebb and flow, but not a day goes by sans bans. These changes will make that science even more exact than it already is.
Title Update 2 will also introduce a brand new type of ban. This is one Shishka and I are super excited for. It’s harsh, it’s metered fairly and most of all, when it hits you, it hurts so bad. This new spike on the banhammer will soon drip wet with the blood of jerks and the innards of sinners.
Another thing we’d file under the “peace of mind” changes portion of TU2 is that we’ll be taking a much closer look at habitual quitters and their contribution to the Halo 3 population. It’s no secret that players quitting out of a game makes a suboptimal experience for those left behind, from black screen host migrations, to the general sour-taste losing while down-a-man actually leaves. For the purposes of this week’s update, this isn’t a “don’t quit or you’ll be banned” threat – but instead, a courteous notification that this is something we’re investigating and intend to continue investigating in the coming months.
The most visible change coming to Halo 3 in TU2 is the in-game addition of Playlist Ratings. We’ve talked about Playlist Ratings before, but here’s a quick recap:
Playlist Ratings are the playlist-level decoupling of Trueskill values (the in-game number next to your name) from Experience (the icon next to your name).
You will now have a separate military rating (based purely on EXP) in each playlist. When TU2 goes live, everyone will begin at 0 EXP. This means that being a General in a Playlist is based on how many games you’ve won in the Playlist, not based on the Trueskill number next to your name.
Your Trueskill values have not been reset. If someone checks your Service Record they will still see your Highest Skill.