Today, we’ve updated Matchmaking across several playlists, including Team Snipers, Team Doubles, Team Action Sack, and more. Read on for details!

Team Snipers has received new and updated maps. Ragnarok has received heavily optimized respawns, and Pitfall and Vertigo have been added to the playlist alongside Community Forge maps “The Ark,” made by The Fated Fire and “Opticon,” made by SaItyKoalaBear. In addition to these updated maps, we’ve also added some variety with new game types.

The first of these are Covenant and Forerunner Snipers, which equip players with Beam Rifles and Binary Rifles, respectively. Also, the traditional Team Snipers variant no longer has any on-map weapons, and each game type (Team Snipers, Covenant Snipers, and Forerunner Snipers) features single-weapon sniping experiences. Snapshot, a new game type, has also been introduced in this week’s update. In this new game type, only “un-zoomed” kills will add to your team score. Players will still be able to zoom in, and even kill opponents whilst in-scope, but these kills will not count towards your team score. Players start with both the Beam Rifle and UNSC Sniper Rifle. Extensive playtesting went into this game type, and we decided to start players with the Beam Rifle as the primary weapon due to the fact that un-zoomed kills with this weapon come at a faster and smoother pace, and we believe that this leads to an optimal flow.

King of the Hill has returned for a two-week period as our featured playlist. In this playlist, we’ve introduced Legendary KotH to the voting options, which offers a slightly different experience that entails sequential hill movement and locked Loadouts. The King of the Hill playlist requires Champions Bundle DLC. We will continue to monitor feedback and data regarding DLC requirements in Matchmaking, and will also continue to provide regular updates regarding our decisions. As stated in the 9.11 Halo Bulletin, playlist consolidation has continued this week, with Multi-Team, Dominion, and Champions Bundle DLC giving up their permanent spot in the Matchmaking line-up.

Capture the Flag also returns to the Team Doubles playlist this week, with CTF now playable on Simplex, Graphite, and Pitfall. Action Sack’s Mini Slayer has also received a new map, Shortbow, which is a playspace on Longbow’s “B” base made specifically for smaller (but not lesser) Spartans. Lastly, the Infinity Slayer playlist has been renamed to Team Slayer due to the wide variety of Slayer game types offered in the playlist.