Overview
If you have a problem or a question that some users have also asked, the solution is probably here. If it’s new, ask and you shall get an answer. Esta guía también está en español. Para verla, haz click aquí.
Introduction
After spending time reading and collecting information from forums, Halo Waypoint, and problems from subreddits and the official Halo server, I decided to do a guide for the most common problems I’ve found, as well as common complaints/proposals that have already been addressed by 343 on their monthly updates.
Note that your case may not get solved even if you do everything on this guide. If that is the case, the best course of action is to submit a support ticket to 343’s bug reporting service, you can do so at this website[support.halowaypoint.com], but note that there are issues they already know about,[support.halowaypoint.com] so make sure you read this before submitting a report.
Frequently Asked Questions – In General
How do I report someone for XP farming/Bad language/Game griefing/bugs I’ve found?
Please have a recording and send your report to this website.[support.halowaypoint.com]
You should put the site in your bookmarks, it’s really useful. If you ever find a bug, make sure to check their list of known issues first for each game and in general before reporting it, because 343 Industries may already know about it:
- Global Issues[support.halowaypoint.com]
- Halo: Reach[support.halowaypoint.com]
- Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary[support.halowaypoint.com]
- Halo 2 Anniversary[support.halowaypoint.com]
- Halo 3[support.halowaypoint.com]
- Halo 3: ODST[support.halowaypoint.com]
- Halo 4[support.halowaypoint.com]
I was banned by accident from matchmaking, or I want a clarification of why I was banned.
Submit a support ticket on the same website as above under Enforcement – Ban Appeal.
The game says I’m missing content even though I paid for it.
Check that you have it downloaded and checked on your list of DLCs, note that the campaign and multiplayer come in different DLCs. If you happen to start downloading and you’re in-game, the download will go faster if you’re not playing.
Why does matchmaking take so long? Are there any gamemodes that are simply dead?
There are various reasons: First of all, the gamemodes and games that aren’t popular will take significantly more time (CE, Halo 2), it is also possible that your time will increase depending on your connection and the distance between you and Xbox’s servers (You can check the ping to those servers in the Network section of Options and Career).
Another possibility is that, if you have Input-Based Matchmaking and/or Platform-Based Matchmaking, it can also modify your waiting times while the game finds people who also have your criteria on. For quicker match times, it is advised to have these options disabled, also located on the Network section of Options and Career.
Also, if you live in Oceania, you’ll most likely have a harder time finding games for almost everything, because of the low population. There was an update made in September that made US servers “fallback servers”, meaning that if nothing is found you will be redirected there, but it may affect your latency.
I didn’t get an achievement for completing a campaign level or all campaign levels in a certain difficulty. Why?
First of all, if you are playing Halo with any 0x scoring skulls on, you will not get level completion achievements (Completing a level, par time, and par score), therefore you will have to do the level all over again.
If that is not the case for you, then you should check your stats on Halo Waypoint[www.halowaypoint.com]. Xbox Live relies on Halo Waypoint to give you the achievement, and Steam relies on Xbox Live, therefore the root cause of your problem is most likely Halo Waypoint.
To check, go to the Halo Waypoint website[www.halowaypoint.com] and log in. Then click on your name and click on “Service Record”.
Once you’re at your service record, go to the right corner and click on “Games”, and select “Halo: The Master Chief Collection”. Combat Evolved Anniversary should show up as the default game for your stats in that section.
Now as you may see, below is a picture of what a service record may look like. The level will be considered “completed” if you have time in it. If your score is empty but you have time, it means that you finished the level but ended it in negative numbers. So in this picture, Assault on The Control Room is okay, but The Silent Cartographer is not okay.
As for what causes the issue of Waypoint not registering level completion, it’s pretty strange and unknown. Sometimes it’s because of downtime, sometimes it’s bad internet, the list goes on. You can either submit a support ticket asking to get the level registered, or do the level again, but at the current response rate, you’re better off doing the level again.
Frequently Asked Questions – Game-specific
Where’s Grifball?
Believe it or not, this is rather common. 343 is known for rotating out and rotating in wacky playlists, to rotate in some other temporary wacky playlists to give their presence a bit more presence.
Grifball is a special case though, people have been using it to macro AFK to farm XP. Getting numerous complaints and reports about it, 343 decided to only rotate in Grifball the second week of every month for a week only. If it’s available in the playlist, enjoy it while you can. If you want to play it while it’s rotated out, your best bet is to save an official map and the gamemode to your files. The game temporarily saves the latest gamemode and map you played automatically.
In Combat Evolved Anniversary or Halo 2, my graphics went from HD to potato mid-gameplay for no reason, how do I turn them back?
P.s. for the veteran UNSC gamers, I do not mean to insult your intelligence, but this has happened three times already.
Simply put, you were playing on Anniversary graphics, released with the anniversary version of the games in 2011 and 2014, respectively, and you switched to the original 2001 or 2004 graphics. To turn them back, simply click TAB (Or the key you have set for the “Switch Graphics/See scoreboard” option).
Why do I keep getting killed as soon as I spawn in CE’s multiplayer?
Believe it or not, this is actually how CE’s multiplayer was handled in Gearbox’s PC port, the map had various spawn spots and you’d be spawned in one that wasn’t blocked, no enemy player check or anything, and so, the system stayed the same in this version of multiplayer. I know it’s frustrating, but that’s how 343 decided to keep it.
Troubleshooting – In General
My game does not go past the 343 logo screen, and I can’t play.
Edit: As of the Halo 4 update, this may or may not be the solution. If this happens to you, please contact me for some testing.
The fix for this is a soul for a soul: Until this bug is fixed, to play you will need to uninstall Halo 2’s multiplayer. To do this, check the DLC section on the right in the game’s page, and click on “Manage my DLC”. There, you must uncheck Halo 2 Multiplayer’s checkbox.
I enter a Halo 4 level/match and I can hear, but not see anything
Known issue; your computer probably isn’t powerful enough to run MCC and only has Intel graphics, if this isn’t the case, leave a comment and I’ll try to help you.
Whenever I start matchmaking I get into an empty lobby, then I hear “Game Over” and then get kicked out of the game.
Your map files may be corrupt or were modified, so the game kicks you out whenever it’s loading the map. You may also get a message saying “Connection Interrupted”. To fix this, verify your game files and try again. If it still doesn’t work, delete your map folder in MCC and try verifying your files again, just to make sure.
The path to the map files is:
Halo: Reach: C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonHalo The Master Chief Collectionhaloreachmaps
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary: C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonHalo The Master Chief Collectionhalo1originalbuildmaps
Halo 2 Anniversary: C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonHalo The Master Chief Collectionhalo2h2_maps_win64_dx11
Halo 3: C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonHalo The Master Chief Collectionhalo3maps
Halo 3: ODST: C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonHalo The Master Chief Collectionhalo3odstmaps
Halo 4: C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonHalo The Master Chief Collectionhalo4maps
Sounds go through my headphones but voice chat only goes through my external monitor/VR headset/other device. What do I do?
Known issue, the only solution as of now is to disable the device as a sound device. You can do this by right-clicking on the sound icon -> Open sound settings, in Output, select your monitor/VR headset/device where the voice chat is outputting to, click on Device Properties, and then click on the checkbox that says “disable”. If you wish to use it later after playing with MCC, you will have to enable it again.
I’m stuck on “Contacting server” and I can’t go to matchmaking.
The easiest solution is, believe it or not, signing out and signing back in. The way to do this is:
- Click on the little person right next to your rank at the main menu.
- Click on your gamertag and then Change Profile.
- You will get a confirmation prompt, click yes.
- You are now logged out.
- And now, you simply have to log back in.
“Required content is missing” after changing the game’s language.
Reach has an extra DLC pack called “Extended Language Pack”, which is exclusive to some languages such as Japanese. To install it, follow these steps:
- Go to your Steam Library and select the game. (Don’t open it)
- Click on “Manage my # DLC.
- Click on the checkbox right next to “MCC – Reach: Extended Language Pack” and click OK.
The extended language pack will now begin downloading. It takes approximately 1.2 GB of space.
“Game Security Violation Detected (#0000000D) [LightingService.exe]”
You have Asus Aura, don’t you? This is a known issue that people have reported for other games[rog.asus.com], but it’s not 343 or Microsoft who have to fix it, it’s Asus. You can either uninstall Asus Aura, or stop the program with Task Manager every time you’re about to boot MCC.
“The UE4-MCC Game has crashed and will close”, or “Fatal Error!”
I can’t really give you a precise solution for this one. 343 is aware of this issue as well and it’s one of their first priorities. What I can say is that this issue is, most of the time, hardware related. (But make sure all of your drivers are up to date first, you’re using the latest version of Windows 10, and you’ve verified the integrity of your game files on Steam.)
What do I mean with hardware related? From what I’ve seen, it’s most likely because you’ve got undervolted RAM, or your GPU is overclocked and you need to reset it back to its original values, as UE4 is very sensitive to overclocks.
I recommend you to get troubleshooting from a professional, you could also ask about it on the official Discord server where I usually dwell at #community-support.[discordapp.com] which I’ve found to be the quickest and more serious of the available alternatives.
Troubleshooting: Game-specific
I can’t pick up weapons, enter vehicles, or do a lot of things in Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. What’s wrong?
It’s strange and you may think it’s unrelated, but the solution is to simply update Windows to the latest version. If for any reason you are unable or not allowed to update your Windows version, you can install a Servicing Stack Update by downloading it here.[www.catalog.update.microsoft.com]
Halo 3 Campaign Co-Op sessions end up getting disconnected
Everyone playing with FPS capped to 60 should do the trick, if this isn’t the case, please make a support ticket about that, you will find how to submit a ticket below this section. It is encouraged that you include this in the report (written by farn, the senior producer of MCC):
Test results when you try changing up using uncapped on/off and different hosts.
internet speed at the moment of disconnection, hdd vs ssd (In which one everyone has the game stored), are you loading into the mission and then getting disconnected or not loading in at all (Include video if possible)
Halo 3: ODST: Getting all the 30 Audio Logs
Some people have gotten confused about getting the achievement for obtaining the 29th audio log on ODST but still being unable to obtain the 30th no matter what, so here’s how the achievement works:
The achievements for obtaining audio logs can be gotten in both Solo and Co-Op, however, your progress for obtained audio logs will only be saved when playing solo. Obtaining audio logs while playing Co-Op will grant you achievements, but will not make progress towards you getting the 30th audio log, if you get all the 29 audio logs in Co-Op and open the Solo campaign, you’ll only have the amount of audio logs you’ve collected in solo.
The only way for you to get the 30th audio log is by collecting the 29 audio logs by yourself, or being with someone who does, although if you perform the latter option, you will get the achievement for getting the 30th Audio Log, but you will not get “Record Store Owner”, which is granted for having collected all the 30 Audio Logs.
Further support and editions
Out of the websites I’ve mentioned in the introduction (Forums, Halo Waypoint, subreddits and the official Halo server), I’ve found the official Halo Discord server to have the quickest, more serious responses. The link to go there is right here.[discordapp.com] Just make sure to follow their rules of behaviour and their rule regarding names with strange fonts.
Ultimately, this guide does not really end here. As new games are released and new playlists come and go, this guide will be updated. If you know of any other bugs that I skipped and the community should be aware of, post them in the comments and I’ll make sure to include them if it’s necessary.
See you in the battlefield, Spartan.