Bungie details Halo: Reach matchmaking a bit more

Earlier in the month, some features included in the matchmaking portion of Halo: Reach were revealed through a detailed piece over on Shack.

Today, Bungie has added even more meat and potatoes to that mix, stirring it all together to feed you what looks to be a very nice beef-stew that is more of a meal that just information.

Here's just some of the interesting portions you will be fed pulled from the official site, so open wide:

• Arena's not the only set of Playlists on offer in Halo: Reach, and it’s not the only competitive offering, either as it's about providing a level playing field for players looking to put their skills to the ultimate test. BUngie can change and tweak the settings from season to season, which will help ensure the experience remains both fresh and fair. Arena is ongoing, it’s seasonal, and you’ll be ranked amongst your peers according to your individual performance.

• Along with under the hood improvements to netcode, Trueskill, and Matchmaking algorithms, Bungie's also beefing up the Connection Options and Social Settings. These settings inform players in the matchmaking system who players should team-up with should you have open slots in your party when you go searching in any given playlist.

• You’ll be matched based on skill alone.

• Connection options were available in Halo 3, but they’ve now been improved and expanded on and players can now pick and choose from all of the available options. By default the game will always look for the “Fastest” search result, but players can then decide how much importance should be given to things like “Good Connection”, “Language”, and “Skill”. Connection Options can and will have a large impact on matching times.

• Matchmaking will now take into account your locale and match you up accordingly.

• Social Settings can be toggled, just like “Connection Options,” the degree to which these factors will influence your matchmaking results are dependent on the specific playlist parameters and it’s important to note that a Social Setting will never override the underlying core matchmaking that takes place.

• Voting allows you to have greater control over the games and maps you’re playing. Once you’re matched into a squad, the game will provide a default map and game variant, but also provide up to three other alternatives. Majority rules, but if a playlist demands special treatment, we can configure blind or no vote options as well.

• In the Beta, players will be able to create Saved Films and upload them to their File Shares and create screenshots that can be posted to their gallery on Bungie.net. In Reach, you’ll be able to have thousands of custom content items and you’ll be able to upload, tag, and search for content right from the in game menus.

• Active Roster is the result of the lobby and Party system getting together with the Friends List, with Player Details getting on the action too.The lobby now displays more than just your own Party. If you have it set to Xbox Live Friends, then it displays your Friends right there in the Roster. You can select them, see what they're doing, see if there's room in their Party, and join them. If a couple of Friends are in the same Party, you can see that right there. There's now less navigating through sub-screens.

• The DMR and the Magnum can take down a fully shielded Spartan with the exact same number of trigger pulls.

• Expect significant polish to be liberally applied the aesthetics from now until we ship.

According to Bungie,  "Halo: Reach "may or may ship in September. When we zero in on a ship date, we’ll make a whole lot of noise about it".

Therefore, until then, just set your sights on the Beta in May, we reckon.

You should also check out the Player Investment system that was detailed a bit last week.

Loads more through the official site.