343 Industries has released the big Halo: The Master Chief Collection (MCC) January update! Halo players will see this as the Halo MCC Update 1.1305, and before you dive in, note that some stuff included are scheduled to go live in February (more on that after the notes). Read up on the full Halo MCC update 1.1305 patch notes below.

Halo MCC update 1.1305 patch notes:

NEW FEATURES & CONTENT

Additional details for the New Features & Content items can be found below in the design update section for rotational playlists, featured content, and events for the month of February.

• Featured playlists in Match Composer
• New nameplates for future events
• New upcoming Matchmaking content

ACCESIBILITY BUG FIXES

PC ONLY

• Fixed an issue where pressing the spacebar would search for a player while typing a Gamertag in the “Find Player” prompt.

GLOBAL

• Fixed bugs where pop-up messages were not read properly by Narrator & Xbox Game Transcription.
• Fixed bugs button prompts were not read properly by Narrator & Xbox Game Transcription.
• Fixed bugs where on-screen text was not read properly by Narrator & Xbox Game Transcription.

GENERAL FIXES

XBOX ONLY

• Fixed an issue where the Main Menu would not appear after passing the title screen when launching for the first time.

GLOBAL

• Fixed a rare crash related to player stats and leaderboards.
• Reduced some excessive diagnostic reporting to improve performance.
• Improved player reporting on dedicated servers when identifying potential anti-cheat violations.

PLAYLIST UPDATE

SOCIAL 1V1

• Removed Magnum secondary from Halo: Reach Head to Head based on community feedback.

Social 1v1 is intended as a warmup arena for the Halo: Reach Hardcore playlist, so it’s important that the settings match.

SOCIAL 4V4

• Team Slayer option has been replaced with “Precision Slayer” and “Auto Slayer.”

Historically, we’ve compromised by combining these into a single selection. We fully understand that different players have different preferences here, so now we offer players choice over their starting weapon/experience.

• Precision Slayer includes weapon starts of DMR, BR, or Magnum.
• Auto Slayer includes weapon starts of AR, SMG, and Halo 4 loadout starts.
• Rotated in featured Halo: CE Anniversary category for Halo: Reach which contains maps and game settings which emulate Halo: CE.

This has been a commonly requested addition and rotational categories provide great opportunities to expose this sort of content.

SOCIAL 8V8

• Reduced hill movement timer from 120s to 90s and reduced score to win from 250 to 200.

Out of the box, Reach’s base King of the Hill variant does not support a 90 second hill rotation option. The 120 second timer was longer than we liked so we took the opportunity to add the option for this variant. As the hill spends less time in each location, players will spend a bit more time moving between hills, so it was important that we reduced the score to win slightly to match this. We weren’t able to add the 90 second option globally as this would require all King of the Hill variants in the game to be rebuilt, but players seeking a 90 second timer for custom games can use the Big Team King variant as a base.

• Replaced Territories with 3-plot Territories on Tempest.

As a symmetrical map, Tempest is well-suited to 3-Plot Territories. In 4v4, this game type was already paired with this map and, after seeing some intense matches of it played in the recent Big Team Battle Throwback Throwdown tournament, we wanted to make it official for 8v8 as well.

• Rotated in experimental AR starts category containing AR start versions of all core Halo: Reach 8v8 map and game variants.

The range utility of the DMR makes it incredibly effective on some of the more open battlegrounds common in Big Team Battle. This leads to many engagements occurring at extreme range and can result in stagnation where players are discouraged from using certain movement options. Many players have requested that DMR starts be replaced with AR / Magnum starts in 8v8. We have concerns that this would leave players too vulnerable off spawn, leave them ineffective against vehicles, not provide enough starting ammunition, and lead to “snowballing” (where the score gap between two teams grows exponentially) when some players gain control of long range rifles. However, we wanted to give players a chance to try it for themselves. Depending on feedback and data, we’ll consider pulling Big Team AR starts into the core categories more permanently.

For a detailed look at the changes from the dev’s perspective, head on over here.