343 Industries has detailed the latest patch that is due to make its way into Halo: The Master Chief Collection, but this one in particular heralds much more than the usual incremental tweaks. Instead, fans of Halo 4 will be pleased to note that the episodic Spartan Ops mode will become available to players in this week’s update.
The cooperative multiplayer mode divides users into fireteams of four who are then tasked with charging through a series of missions. Initially, the popular game mode was due to arrive in tandem with the compilation’s 20GB day-one patch, though 343 opted to push Spartan Ops back in order to make “technical enhancements” before reintroducing the mode to a modern audience.
Here’s a comprehensive list of the patch notes, as provided by 343:
Spartan Ops:
Added the entirety of Halo 4’s Spartan Ops mode
Matchmaking:
Made an update to make sure a match only starts when teams are even.
Players will now receive a ‘loss’ when disconnecting before a round has ended.
Made an update to include all split screen players in vote tally.
Resolved an issue that caused players to become stuck “Joining Session.”
Resolved an issue where players could be dropped from matchmaking after disconnecting their controller.General Multiplayer Updates:
Made additional improvements to Halo: CE hit registration.
Made an update to the “Halo 2: Anniversary Career Progress” page to ensure achievements are correctly tracked.
Fixed an issue where it took a long time to join players that are in a Multiplayer lobby.
Along with the release of the patch, the studio weighed on the matter of dedicated servers, after some Halo: The Master Chief Collection users began to vent their frustration that 343 hadn’t provided any update.
“Please be aware that you may connect to the dedicated server quickly enough that you won’t see the ‘connecting to dedicated server’ dialog,” 343 said. “The absence of that dialog doesn’t mean that you’re not playing on a dedicated server.”