Hey folks. I recently made a point to get myself an Xbox One and "get my Halo on", so I bought MCC and while it's awesome having all of the campaigns in one place and running nice and smooth, my attempts at multiplayer have been met with tremendous matchmaking wait times.
It regularly seems as though I spend at least twice as much time searching for a match as I do playing said match.
I'm aware of the bjorked launch this game had, but I would have guessed the matchmaking would work by now.
What gives?

It's still kinda wonky but I've been able to get in and play matches. I think it's a combination of wonkiness and dwindling player base.

Multiplayer is more or less perfectly fine now, the issue is player base. Most people who were still playing MCC jumped ship to Halo 5, being it's the new fancy Halo. I'm sure you could still find a few games in MCC but it would be an effort.

@takayamasama: Yeah, sometimes I can hit matchmaking and get into matches relatively regularly, and other times I find myself sitting around for 15 minutes or so and just quitting out entirely because I don't feel like waiting.
It would be nice if they had a "current players" indicator on each playlist or something so I knew not to waste my time trying to find a match in a playlist with no players.
Halo 5 is nice and all, but there's so much game in MCC, I don't really get how people could get their fill of it.

It never worked perfectly, but there seem to be continued minor updates that release periodically for the game. Matchmaking time never resembled the old games, issues with parties and lobbies still prevail, connection droppage still plagues the actual playing of the game. But if you were patient you could probably manage to get in a game here and there.

Much of the population has migrated to Halo 5, since we're still in the release shadow. Plus, a large fraction of the population seems to really enjoy Halo 5. It helps that, on a technical level, Halo 5's matchmaking and lobby systems operate smoothly, but as a result, you might be hard pressed to reliably get games in the Master Chief Collection for a while.

It's possible people may go back to MCC after awhile since everything pre-Halo 4 still has its own specific feel. I'm kind of surprised you didn't get Halo 5 first though? Or did you get a bundle with MCC? I don't remember but I definitely thought there was a player counter in MCC - there is in 5 and there was in Halo 4, but maybe that's asking too much functionality for that crazy collection.

I own both, but the super serious rank stuff in Halo 5 and lack of chaotic modes (koth/oddball/etc) are pushing me away a bit. I've been playing Halo 5 much more than MCC, but that's only because matchmaking is practically instantaneous on there.

I've been playing a lot more Halo 5 lately. I imagine most people are.

Agreed, I'm having fun with 5 but I have zero interest in my rank or kill/death. I'm sure they'll add more of those whacky playlists later on - maybe they just wanted to funnel everyone into the typical gametypes for the initial launch.

Hope so!

Where is the player counter in 5? I was wondering about that, but haven't seen it.

As far as chaos, the new Strongholds game type can get really wild, especially on certain maps, I personally think it is better than KOTH. I do miss Oddball tho. They've just added Big Team Battle yesterday so that adds to the fun. I always used BTB as my more casual Halo MP, and I'll still see it that way even if it's a ranked playlist (if you don't care about rank, just play and don't worry about it?) I know some people want them to add casual playlists, but even with the new release, the Halo player base isn't what it used to be so I'd rather not divide things even further. Ofcourse, there is always Warzone, but that hasn't really grown on me.

MCC was just shy of being a literal dumpster fire when it released, so any chance of it having legs died soon after release except for the professional H2A competitions, and that is now out the door with the release of Halo 5's excellent 4v4 MP. That's not to say that you can't find matches assuming it works, but I wouldn't count on it ever having a strong enough player base again to get the type of matchmaking results you'll get from any current popular shooter.

@thiago123: Player counter is on the title screen last I looked. It's kind of in a weird spot in the right upper corner. Now that I'm typing this I just realized that's not a player counter per playlist - just overall count playing Halo.

@thiago123: Strongholds can be pretty fun, though I prefer the more focused craziness of KotH. I'm hoping they remove Breakout from the Team Arena playlist at some point, as that already has its own hopper and I do not find it very fun. (I could be in the majority there though.)

@nickhead: That number on the main menu screen is current players? It is in a strange spot... Whose idea was it to put it there, ha.

Community seems split on Breakout. Some love it, some can't stand it. Even professional players have come out against Breakout.

I think Halo 5 will really open up once 343 launches unranked playlists. As much as I'd like to simply not care about my rank, the problem goes beyond K/D ratios or sparkly badges. In the game's current setup, you're always matched against people of equivalent-or-higher ranking. While you or I may not care about our ranks, others in the playlists certainly will, which ends up promoting more aggressive, unbalanced tactics or, less insidious, generally encourages the system to match lone players against unified fireteams. So even if you're just playing for fun, you're more likely to get slammed match after match by more competitive-minded groups in their current playlists than you would in an unranked social lobby.

I'm with you, @spitznock. At this point I'd rather play Halo 2, 3, or 4 than Halo 5. And it isn't a slight to Halo 5 to say that. I just generally like the older games a bit more.

A few months ago, it was working flawlessly for me. But Halo 5 just hit so that's the place to be for a chunk of that player base.

I'm sure over time, people will start to spread out between both games again.

Are you talking about that number on the upper right that always says 75k+? That's not a player counter, that is a version number of the build. Apparently Bungie uses a weird numbering system. You can tell it is not a player count because it doesn't change. I don't have the link to it handy, but this was confirmed by 343's community guy on Twitter.

Wow I'm an idiot. Thanks for clearing that up. I just assumed that's what it was, didn't look into it or check that it ever changed haha