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Bunige has announced the March playlist
update, which includes a number of features and tweaks to
the matchmaking experience. Also bungie reveals the double
Xp weekend playlists, as well as some tweaks to the DLC playlists.
We're introducing two Weekend Hoppers
DoubleXP playlists this month, with the first hopper launching
Thursday, March 6 at NOON.
Grifball, the game created by Burnie Burns
of Red vs. Blue will be an unranked, weekend-long social
playlist awarding DoubleXP to winning teams. We've slightly
adjusted some of the rules for Grifball (unlimited round
times make for unlimited griefing potential), but kept the
game's core intact. You'll be able to go in with party configurations
ranging from one to eight people. This playlist will be
available from Thursday, March 6 at NOON until March 10
at NOON(all times Pacific Standard). I apparently forgot
to mention that the Grifball hopper is being treated like
a Tournament hopper -- a hopper where there will be prizes.
Tournament prizes.- Beginning March 20 at NOON
will be the return of Team SWAT in the Social, DoubleXP
variety. Team SWAT is an old Halo 2 gametype where players
have no shields, increased body health and do not have the
luxury of radar. This eight-player maximum hopper will be
completely Team Slayer focused with the SWAT ruleset. This
weekend playlist will be available from March 20 at NOON
until March 23 at NOON(all times Pacific).
The Heroic DLC hopper has underwent
some revisions as well. The hopper has been split into DLC
Slayer (4v4) and DLC Objective (6v6) featuring a mix of various
gametypes on the DLC maps. Slayer variants include Team Snipers,
Team Rockets, Team BRs, Team Duel and Team Duals. Objective
variants include Multi Flag CTF, Multi Flag BR, One Flag,
Assault, Neutral Bomb Assault and Team King.
A number of other changes
to maps and Matchmaking were included in today's rollout:
Fixed map exploit on The Pit
Fixed map exploit on Construct
Fixed map exploit on Epitaph
Reduced Ranked Big Team Battle "Large party" size
to six players and increased Big Team threshold to two*
Fixed Spartan Laser occasionally falling through map on
SandtrapFixes to matchmaking
to allow more even leveling for players
Disabled Mixed Skill restrictions for RBTB and Team Slayer**
These changes
are all live, now.
As always if you see
map issues, please report them in relevant and pertinent
forums with a link to a video in your File Share. We may
not be responding to everything, but we absolutely are reading
the forums.
*The reduction in "Large
Party" size for Ranked Big Team battle does not affect
the total amount of players in a given game, but rather
is a change to the system and what it "considers"
a big party. A few weeks ago we changed that number to seven
and found that it did not decrease matching times significantly,
and so we're adjusting that number. Ultimately, we want
to have Ranked Big Team evolve into a playlist where you
go as a large team to fight other large teams -- now we've
changed the system so that Large Teams are considered parties
of six or more instead of seven or more.
We've adjusted the threshold
to allow teams of six to now match with teams of six, seven,
and eight players, where before, an eight-player team would
only match against a team of seven or eight, now an eight
player will match against a six, seven or eight player team.
We're still keeping some restriction because we don't want
the Ranked Experience to be a bunch of "organized teams"
steamrolling a collection of solo players. We hope that
these two changes (along with the below change) will improve
the Ranked Big Team matching experience. We'll be monitoring
this closely, going forward.
**Parties are considered
"Mixed Skill" when there is a spread between the
highest skill and lowest skill is greater than 10 levels.
In matchmaking, when your party has mixed skill the system
tries to match you up with similarly mixed skill parties.
Now, in Ranked Big Team and Team Slayer when your party
is "Mixed" you will be able to match against parties
that do not have "mixed skills" associated with
them.
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