Halo: Master Chief Collection July Update Includes Huge Changes To Firefight Mode

Increased player counts, join-in-progress and more!

by Ben Kerry Tue 11th Jul 2023

Halo: Master Chief Collection July Update Includes Huge Changes To Firefight Mode

343 is back again with another Halo: Master Chief Collection update, and July 2023's drop feels busier than ever with big changes to Firefight, Halo 3 game mode support and more.

The headline additions are for Firefight in this month's update, with plenty of new options coming to the collection on July 12th. The team is (finally) adding the ability to join Firefight matches in progress, which means you don't have to start from scratch to get playing some MCC PvE. This is true for both public and custom games, and Firefight matches will also be added as a new option for the Custom Games Browser as a result of the new join-in-progress options.

That's not all either. Although this feature won't be applied for regular matchmade games (at least for now), the team is upping the max player count for custom Firefight matches. Custom lobbies will now be able to go up to eight players total from the previous max of four for some proper Firefight mayhem!

Elsewhere in the July update, 343 is adding Theater mode support to Halo 4's campaign & Spartan Ops modes, and Escalation Slayer is coming to Halo 3 - a game mode where teams progress through multiple weapon tiers as they take down enemy Spartans. Escalation Slayer is available within other MCC Halo titles, and Infinite of course, but it's now coming to Halo 3!

There are lots of other smaller changes and additions coming in tomorrow's Master Chief Collection update too, with all the details laid out in a new Halo Waypoint blog post.

Are you still playing the Master Chief Collection in 2023? Let us know if you'll be testing out these new Firefight options down below!

1
InterceptorAlpha
Tue 11th Jul 2023

They really need to add 4 player split screen for Firefight. That's ths biggest mising feature IMO.

2
ParsnipHero
Tue 11th Jul 2023

8 person firefight is insane. I hope we see something like this in the future in Infinite. Possibly 12 person BTB forgeable Firefight? Seeing as forgeable AI and multiplayer PvE content is coming in Season 5.

3
xMightyMatt14x
Tue 11th Jul 2023

FTC lost everyone! The PI was denied @FraserG

4
Grumblevolcano
Tue 11th Jul 2023

These MCC updates continue to be fantastic but it's a shame the game has a small population issue because of Infinite. Before I let my Gold subscription lapse, I was struggling to find matches in MCC.

5
NeoRatt
Tue 11th Jul 2023

Everyone should pause and think about this for a second. MS released Halo MCC on XBO in 2014. Here we are 9 years later and MS is still strongly supporting the game and bringing new features to it. Think about that 9 years.

People often ask me why I am loyal to MS/XB. This is my reason. Yes, like every other company they walk away from products and abandon them if they don't do well. But, when they decide they are supporting something their support of the product is second to no company in the tech industry.

6
shoeses
Wed 12th Jul 2023

I'm not sure if Firefight would be better with 8 players if they're using the same maps. Just adding more enemies would only work for the biggest ones, but even then to equate for 8 players the maps wouldn't be big enough with the number of enemies they'd need to add. Feels like it'd be a better idea to add Firefight & the 'Big' Firefight to Infinite instead of messing with the MCC.

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