Update is live

[thesilentdeath]

According to Bungie (http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=13280), the update's live as of last night. Just thought I'd pass this along since I didn't see anything about it here.

[Shadowstorm]

Sounds hot.

Now to continue waiting for that free DLC in the Spring.

[NationalKato]

I know why they did it, but I'm still a bit saddened by the removal of the high-velocity melee effect. That was always funny.

[Shadowstorm]

I know why they did it, but I'm still a bit saddened by the removal of the high-velocity melee effect. That was always funny.

Agreed.

Also, I saw a person get booted today in a BTB social game. Never seen that before.

[Ix Quantum xI]

I'm curious as to how the new melee is. Anyone care to share since my xbox is getting repaired?

[Baron Samedi]

I'm curious as to how the new melee is. Anyone care to share since my xbox is getting repaired?

Basically, I saw a lot of both opponents killing each other in the melee. You have to be the clear winner (i.e. shoot first) to walk away.

[Ix Quantum xI]

Basically, I saw a lot of both opponents killing each other in the melee. You have to be the clear winner (i.e. shoot first) to walk away.

Thats good for me, hopefully over time this will force people to not use melee as thier first option for attacking.

[NationalKato]

You have to be the clear winner (i.e. shoot first) to walk away.

That's incorrect. They are using health as the deciding factor. Sometimes, both players will die, which is new, but no longer will it be based on 'who shot first' because there are too many issues with latency.

From the Bungie press release:

Melee contests will only produce a winner if he has a sizeable health advantage over the loser. Otherwise, both players may die in the clash.

Put simply, in Halo 2, whoever threw the first melee won. Sounds perfect, right? Not quite.

Get your Einstein on, we’re going to talk about relativity. Specifically, the relative observations of host versus client. In Halo 3, across our entire population, we observe an average latency between host and client of around 80-100ms, which is around three frames. Assuming 90ms of latency, consider what happens when the host and client both throw melee attacks at exactly the same time. The host will see the client’s melee attack as many as three frames later, while the client will see the host’s melee attack three frames later. Who attacked first?

Well, in the halcyon days of Halo 2, the host made that determination. Which means his melee was first and the client lost the melee fight far more often than they should have. And in the event of two clients attacking simultaneously, the one with lower latency to the host would appear to have attacked first, and would be the winner. In a peer-to-peer environment with latency, it is nigh impossible to determine exactly who attacked first.

Over Halo 2’s three years online, many people adapted and got used to preemptively throwing a melee, but it was still fundamentally unfair in favor of the host or people with faster connections.

So, to be clear and upfront, we will not be returning to those days of letting the host win when the outcome is in doubt, aka. first melee wins.

[Skull3r]

I'm playing the update right now and if you guys didn't tell me what changed, I probably wouldn't have noticed a difference anyway...