It looks like Shacknews got the scoop on the crazy amount of tweaks and new features coming to Halo: Reach and it’s beta on May 6th. After you read this, you will understand why it needed a beta. First up when you hit the title screen of Reach you will see which of your friends are playing and what EXACTLY they are doing. Down to time left in their game. If your like me and you’ve played a bunch of Halo 3 with friends online, you know how annoying it can be to send or receive a request to play with a friend only to find out they have already jumped into their next game and it’s full. Well now you can join their queue and when their game is over, POOF you will join them in the lobby after their game.
I always thought I was pretty decent at Halo 3, and while I’m ranked kind of high and I have an impressive amount of XP I still wasn’t quite sure where I stood in the pantheon of great Halo players, well with Arena playlists I wont have to wonder anymore. Arena is for the hardest of the hardcore. Team Slayer and Slayer matches ONLY in here. Players who play in these playlists will have to play X amount of games each day to earn a daily ranking in month long seasons of matches. The daily ranking system will take your best games of the day to create your ranking. If you have enough daily rankings in a month you will get a final grade when the season is over. The rating system doesn’t just grade you on kills, but K/D ratio, and assists in team based games. The Arena will be split into different skill divisions Onyx, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Steel. This should make for some exciting games and make them feel like they really matter towards something.
In Halo 3 you could party up with people you were just matchmade against, in Reach if the system determines you should still be playing together the group will just roll right into the next game without much hesitation. If you don’t want to continue playing with or against the same people you just played with, you can opt-out of playing with them, essentially it’s the opposite of the party up feature from Halo 3.
You are also going to get fine grained control of how matchmaking works. Only ever want to play with people with good connections? It can be done. Only want to play with people of a similar skill, it can be done. You can also set your social settings. Teamwork, Chattiness, Tone, and Motivation are the social settings. Tell Reach if you’re chatty and you will only be teamed up with other chatty people. Is your motivation having fun? You will only be matchmade against other people who want to have fun. I imagine that Bungie will also have control over this and be able to make more choices so that your experience with Halo: Reach is always exactly the way you want it.
There is a ton more stuff to see, so check out Shacknews’ article and if you don’t own a copy of ODST it might be time to go get one so you can experience these features for yourself when the beta drops in May.