I'm having enormous lag issues with matchmaking, as well as some with Spartan Ops (though this obviously isn't the venue for those complaints). Up until the update today there was some occasional lag; post-update, the game is pretty much unplayable as a result of massive lag causing other players and occasionally myself to teleport around the map, actions taking place several seconds late, and players rendered entirely immune to damage. I have my NAT settings wide open, ports forwarded, and there isn't a problem with my connection, so it has to be down to the server load or some other bug with the system 343 have in place.
I absolutely appreciate that having hundreds of thousands of people attempting to connect to your servers at once is a daunting challenge for any company to deal with, and others certainly have done much worse recently (Blizzard spring to mind). But this is one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world, and 343 have generally done a very good job with it, so I'm perplexed as to exactly why the multiplayer falls over so often. I've put a lot of time into the game over the last few months, and I've played Halo since it first came out. I really like what they've done with the solid multiplayer from Reach, as well as the huge variety of different modes and Skinner-box-like gear and armour customisation systems, not to mention Spartan Ops (which I love), and I'd very much like to be able to continue playing. If this problem persists, however, I won't. Those things that kept me coming back to the game are rendered utterly moot by the frustration of trying to play through the enormous amounts of lag.
Based on a quick googling of the problem, this is a widespread issue and one that needs to be resolved as quickly as possible. There are news articles being written about it, forum posts on here, and a whole host of angry tweets and Facebook updates. I'd appreciate a response from whoever handles customer engagement at 343 Industries as to why it's persisted so long, how they're dealing with it, and why the latest update may have worsened the situation rather than resolving it. Have your engineers look at exactly what's happening, and get back to your fanbase, please? We'd really like to be able to play your game, because it's otherwise great.
