Halo: MCC was supposed to get its Firefight beta sometime during July. July has, however, come and gone, with the flighting test nowhere to be found. According to 343, this was due to severe blocking bugs that the team hasn’t yet resolved.
The developers have said that they had to hold back the so-called FireFlight due to bugs that broke the game to a point where it was unplayable. “While we strive to ensure we run our flights on a timely basis, ensuring the effectiveness of the flight must take priority,” said 343.
Surprisingly enough, 343 Industries have prepared a rather lengthy blog post which explained in great detail what each of the blocking bugs did and how. Without going into the nitty-gritty of it, Halo: Reach’s PC version is currently still pretty far away from reaching its more open flighting stages, and there’s a number of bugs that the team is yet to fully resolve.
343 have referenced five main bugs that have prevented them from kicking off the July testing phase:
- Security solution does not auto-install once game is installed
- Long delays in menus accompanied by matchmaking errors can happen
- Opening the settings menu during gameplay can cause the roster to stay stuck on screen
- Frame loss can be experienced in various menus when played in higher resolutions
- Crash is present sometimes when a matchmade Firefight game starts
“These key issues are blockers in that they are deemed severe enough to prevent a flight from functioning as needed,” according to 343. Far as their overly-optimistic flighting predictions go, they had something to say as well: “We were wrong about a few things and this is something that happens often in the complex, fluid world of game development.”
With all of this in mind, it does seem like the eventual full release of Halo: MCC on PC is pretty far away still. In fact, there are two more flighting tests coming up after this one (PVP and Xbox), and then there will be a period of polishing and fixing following the betas.
343 concluded with the classic statement of “it’s ready when it’s ready.”
