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This topic has moved here: Subject: Patch 1.1
  • Subject: Patch 1.1
Subject: Patch 1.1
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Anybody know where I can get some information about the first patch that came out for h2?

  • 11.05.2007 4:46 PM PDT
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I'll tell you what I know about it. The first patch came off the first map packs.. mapack and blastacular or something. It also changed the Black Eye skull effect regarding the snow. The original way the Black Eye skull worked was that every time you picked up the skull you turned the snow on or off. First time off, next on, next off, etc etc.. and that's about all I know. I made my Halo 2 bone stock after having it updated.. did that by erasing all 17 profiles.. 15 of which were skull profiles.

  • 11.06.2007 5:59 PM PDT
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The 1st patch also removed ghosting glitches with the warthog, deintensified grenades, minimized the tracking of plasma pistols, and came with addition of the new maps.

  • 11.06.2007 6:07 PM PDT
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"Deintensified grenades"...wtf....It made the plasma grenades more powerful and made the frag grenade explode a bit faster after the first bounce. If anything that makes it more intense.

"minimized the tracking of plasma pistols"...again wtf. It did no such thing. The plasma pistol tracks the same as it did in 2004.

The 1.1 patch increased melee damage, tweaked grenade timing and strength, decreased the damage of the Magnum, SMG+PR combo, made the BR pinpoint accurate so it was more effective at range, etc.
http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid= 4221

WEAPONS CHANGES!

The scale of the autoupdate gave us a unique opportunity – a chance to implement balance changes on certain weapons to smooth out the Xbox Live and System Link experience, and in a couple of cases, we feel, subtly improving the overall feel of the game.



Melee Damage

Melee damage has been increased across the board as a counter measure of sorts to close-up dual wielding. Jumping strikes are now much more powerful, often resulting in instant kills, while the general potency has been increased for normal melee attacks and the Brute Shot has been given a specific melee attack boost, in recognition of the fact that it has a huge scythe attached to it. This actually makes the Brute Shot a go-to weapon in a lot of new situations.

Examples of the increase in power include one-hit kills from many jumping strikes, two-hit kills from the Brute Shot melee attack, and far more power on torso and head strikes from all other weapons.



Grenades

Grenade attacks will be one of the most significant changes for the 1.1 version of Halo 2. In many ways, the new grenade balance is a reflection of the way we really wanted them to be. Grenades were not only weakened in the previous iteration, they didn't address the balance difference between a grenade-throwing player and a dual-wielding attacker.

A common complaint amongst critics (and Bungie employees!) was that grenades felt very weak and often simply ensured that a player would be hurt rather than killed. Some unfortunate side effects of this, apart from a difference in "feel" between Halo CE and Halo 2 were unpredictable damage and difficulty making accurate, long distance throws have any significant impact. The grenades, both plasma and human, have been improved in a number of ways and are significantly more powerful.

The fuse timer has been SHORTENED on the Frag and Plasma Grenade to increase their value in combat and in last-ditch efforts to defeat an attacker. In most instances, this new fuse timing will reduce the harm they cause when accidentally tossed at the start of a new round. The shortened fuse also makes using grenades for attacks slightly more predictable and accurate.

The damage caused by plasma grenades (frag grenade power is increased slightly) is significantly increased. In testing, we found that players equated it with the type of damage caused in Halo 1. A plasma grenade detonating at a player's feet will likely kill that player outright, even with full shields. The shortened fuse and small damage-boost on the frag grenade means that a well-thrown 'nade is more dangerous.

We feel that this, more than almost all the other changes will be noticed, and incorporated into the widest range of player skill. The grenade goes from being a dangerous distraction to a potent, flexible weapon and will change the balance of Slayer and objective-based games dramatically. We expect to see a lot of criticism initially, as we understand folks are used to playing one way – but long term testing has shown that it improves the experience in the vast majority of maps and game types.

Plasma "sticks" will continue to be utterly deadly. And note that there is a knock-on effect to Brute Shot ammo from the power increase on frag grenades. It's subtle but enhances the Brute Shot nonetheless.


Magnum

Magnum bullet damage has been slightly reduced to emphasize accurate headshots over a simple dual wielding combo. The auto-accuracy of the Magnum has also been toned down slightly when dual wielding.

SMG

Other slight reductions include the softening of the Plasma Rifle and SMG combo, to bring it in line with other combos. Experts will notice the difference.

Fixing Cheats and Glitches:



With the sheer number of variables on the Xbox Live service, the fantastic numbers of players involved and the vast disparity between ISPs, modems and quality of service, it took time for us to identify all the cheats, glitches and exploits. And unlike a PC game, even once you've addressed all of the problems, the solution isn't as simple as posting a patch on a website. A console game is largely immutable, and implementing changes is a significant task. The fixes we've implemented required a great deal of testing, tweaking and retesting to ensure the autoupdate process would go smoothly and provide satisfactory results for every Halo 2 player on Xbox Live.

With all that aside, what follows is a partial list of the changes, bug fixes and anti-cheating measures we have implemented.

Geometry Glitches

Flag Bouncing: We're fixing the super high flag bounce caused by collisions with certain objects – like the conveyor belt in Colossus. Teams would often simply bounce the flag from one side to the other, thus ruining a vital aspect of that map's intrinsic design.

We've fixed the flag-grab-through-solid-walls problem (although you can still toss a flag through legitimate places, like gates and windows. This will have a huge effect in CTF games on Beaver Creek, Zanzibar and Coagulation.

Elite melee ghosting – a glitch allowed a player (using a short sequence of button presses) to exit a vehicle and continue to an objective while all other players viewed the player as an invulnerable stationary "ghost" at the original point of disembarkation. This was caused by forcing the Xbox to "lose track" of the player.

Sword flying will be gone from multiplayer, though we'll keep it in Campaign mode. This was basically an exploit that allowed players to "fly" by locking onto a target with a Sword while riding in a vehicle – then later releasing a pent-up Sword lunge, and basically soaring, unhindered through the air. Although a noisy part of the community feels this was a fun, unexploitable bug, we have witnessed it used for cheating, and when we fix other problems, any we left in deliberately would be exploited all the more.

We've addressed the "ghosted dropped weapon" problem, which was caused by a difference in object location tracking between different machines - a gun you just couldn't pick up, for example – and is easily encountered during games between Pal and NTSC machines.

We've fixed the tie resolution problems that automatically defaulted the red team as winner in a tie.

We've made some changes to the way our system works when entering Clan matches – basically making it easier to enter even when conditions are less than ideal. The measures used before were perhaps too strict and prevented some players from entering games with their clan.

We've addressed the bug on Beaver Creek that caused double-teleporting – this was related to poor bandwidth, and it would cause a player to bounce back out of the teleporter rather than passing cleanly through.

We fixed a glitch that made players too immune to sniper fire while in turrets.



Cheats

We've addressed the modem standby cheat. Can't say how, but we've implemented several fixes to help alleviate this problem. We can't stop people from pressing suspend modem, but we can make it less worthwhile to them. We've also added a number of ways to make it more difficult for players to abuse the fact that they are the host of a game.

This is just a sampling of what we're fixing. Some things are insignificant, some you won't even have heard of, and others we don't want to discuss at this time. All in all, it should be a very pleasant and painless experience and one that improves your experience significantly.

This is a partial list. Many of the changes we've implemented will be invisible to players. Some are simply minor tweaks to networking or performance code. Some are more important, but happen in the background. Some fixes will simply remain undisclosed to prevent further abuse of the system, and we realize that even this tremendous run of changes won't be entirely complete and that abuses by unsportsmanlike players will continue, but we're confident that these tweaks and adjustments will improve the experience for beginners and experts alike.


Autoupdate for the Masses

The Autoupdate is an Xbox Live download, and can be implemented by logging any Xbox with Halo 2 onto the Live service. While we encourage non Live users to borrow an account, try a free trial membership or take their box to a Live-using friend's home, we are also including this and all previous autoupdates on the retail Maptacular disc available later this year. That means that the fixes will be available to everyone eventually.

Split Screen Enhancement

Split screen players have long complained that their screens are too muddled with interface and messages to see what's going on clearly. The Autoupdate also removes the pop-up messages that have plagued split screen gamers. The downside is that they no longer see those messages at all, but in testing and polling, we've found that the cleaner screen presentation makes that a small price to pay.


[Edited on 11.06.2007 8:45 PM PST]

  • 11.06.2007 8:22 PM PDT
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Nice information Fatso. Makes me wonder if it was by accident or design that Black Eye's side effect was scrambled and made random.

  • 11.08.2007 6:53 PM PDT