Starting today, you’ll begin to see some changes in Halo 3 matchmaking and others will be rolled out later this month. Some of these changes are permanent while others are only for a limited time, so charge up those batteries and get yourself ready.
Here’s an outline of what’s coming in matchmaking.
Starting today (March 6th) at NOON pacific standard time, or 3 PM for those of us on the east coast of the U.S., Bungie will launch the popular team sport of Grifball, which was created by Burnie Burns of Red vs Blue. Grifball will be available until March 23rd. It’s being treated as a tournament, which means there will be prizes. I have no idea what they may be.
Team SWAT will return! This variant will begin on March 20th, NOON PST (3 PM EST) and last until March 23rd. Here’s hoping they decide to make it permanent eventually. I always loved SWAT in Halo 2.
Both of these new matchmaking variants will award DOUBLE EXP. This could be a nice shortcut to do some ranking up, if you’re having trouble reaching your next skill level target.
Changes made to the Heroic DLC Playlist
Bungie has also introduced some nice new tweaks to the Heroic playlist. If you’re unsure what that is, it’s simply a playlist created allowing those who purchased the Heroic map pack to play against others who also have those maps. I enjoy playing on them occasionally. I may do so more often now thanks to these following updates which are live right NOW.
Heroic DLC has now been split into two separate variants - Team Slayer 4v4 and Team Objective 6v6. Games included in the slayer variant will be Team Snipers, Team Rockets, Team BRs, Team Duel and Team Duals. While in team objective you’ll have Multi Flag CTF, Multi Flag BR, One Flag, Assault, Neutral Bomb Assault and Team King
Bungie has also made some bug fixes in various maps and matchmaking.
Map exploits on The Pit, Construct and Epitaph have been fixed. I don’t think I even know what the exploits were, so I don’t imagine I’ll notice this change.
The size of the large party in Big Team Battle has been reduced to six players
A fix to matchmaking will now allow for more even leveling for players
Mixes skill restrictions for Team Slayer and Ranked Big Team Battles has been disabled
That’s all for now. Perhaps I’ll see you online in Grifball over the next couple days.
You didn’t hear it from me, but it appears Alex Garland’s script for the on again off again silver screen adaption of Halo has found its way online. It’s funny how those things happen.
BTW, last reports in October of last year were that the status of the film is “on again” according to an interview in Vanity with Ken Kamins, Peter Jackson’s representative. Jackson is producing the film. Apparently Neil Blomkamp has been tabbed to direct after it was turned down by Guillermo del Toro so he could film Hellboy 2.
Here’s a quote from the Vanity interview.
“What happened was this: Universal, on behalf of both studios, asked for a meeting with the filmmakers just prior to the due date of a significant payment,” says Kamins.
“Basically, they said that in order to move forward with the film, the filmmakers had to significantly reduce their deals. They waited until the last minute to have this conversation. Peter and Fran, after speaking with their producing partners and with Microsoft and Bungie, respectfully declined.”
“Everybody is supremely confident in Neal,” Kamins said. “Part of what excited Peter and Fran was Neal’s vision. We’re very confident this film will move forward with the creative partners intact, who will take the film to production.”
Obviously a lot could have and probably has happened since this interview.
Have you ever ended up in a game of Halo3 online where instead of everyone actually playing, they’d rather help each other “achieve” their medals? I find it annoying. This video pokes fun at them.
As part of the latest “What’s Update” on Bungie, the company which brought us Halo 3 took some time to answer quite a few questions from players. One player inquired about concerns related to the recent melee fix in the last autoupdate.
The Dr Whom asks:
Is there any concern that in the new melee fix two hammer attacks can kill each other or that a regular melee and a sword can kill each other?
Why would there be a concern? If that’s what happens, then that’s what happens. The system is designed to cause a fair outcome based on health, shields, timing – as best as can be done with the realities of latency. Think about the number of simultaneous deaths that happened in olde worlde pistol duels. Or even sword duels.
I personally really like the fix to the melee system. At least now it’s not always so one sided. There was nothing more irritating than emptying an entire clip into an opponent only to still end up getting beat bitch slapped when both the opponent and myself execute a melee at the same time. Something just wasn’t right there. I’m fine with a simultaneous death. At least I get the kill now.
They also fixed the whole “matrix style death” that would occur when a player would beat you down. By that I mean your body would fly all the way across the map. While it was neat the first couple times I saw it, it got old fast.
