Halo: The Master Chief Collection Season 2 Makes Big Changes To Progression System [Update]

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is changing its progression system for the upcoming Season 2 update. Developer 343 Industries announced that it will soon begin to allow people to purchase "seasonal items." [Update: following the publication of this story, Microsoft removed the word "purchase" from its blog post, so it seems microtransactions may not be coming to MCC. Instead, players could be getting these items a different way.]

MCC currently has a battle pass-style progression system that players grind through gameplay to unlock new stuff.

"We also heard feedback that players want more choice in the order they unlock items, so we are adding the ability to purchase seasonal items in a given tier in any order that players want," design director Max Szlagor said on the Halo website.

[UPDATE: the wording here has since been changed to say, "We are adding the ability to unlock seasonal items in a given tier in any order that players want." Based on this, it seems microtransactions are not, in fact, coming to MCC, but rather that you can spend Season Points to unlock the new content. Microtransactions weren't in the original Halo games.]

In MCC, a tier consists of 10 unlock slots. The Season 1 progression system had 10 unlock slots in each tier, of which there were 10. With the new microtransaction system, players can't buy anything they want. "Players will still need to unlock all items in tier 1 in order to access tier 2 items, but in any given tier players can choose their favorite items first," the developer said.

MCC Season 2 will include more than 100 new items to unlock, including vehicle skins of Halo: CE for the first time in the game's history. 343 is making another change to how you unlock stuff, too. In Season 1, the "season points" required to unlock new content could only be earned through multiplayer gameplay. However, Season 2's progression system will let you earn these points in campaign, Firefight, and PvP.

MCC Season 2 will begin when Halo 3 is released on PC, which should be soon given that the closed beta has just ended.

343's MCC development team is one of at least two teams inside the company. The other is working on Halo Infinite for release as a launch title on Xbox Series X this year. Microsoft plans to showcase the game during an Xbox 20/20 event in July. That event has now been confirmed to take place on July 23.