Big news for the competitive Halo community: the organizers of the game's official eSports circuit have doubled the prize pool for the Season 1 Finals.
343 announced today on Halo Waypoint that the $50,000 prize pool for the first year's championship tournament has been bumped up to $100,000. That pool is split between the top tier of teams, with the first place squad taking the lion's share, so the new amount is a lot more per player.
Furthermore, the organizers have finally made changes to the way interrupted games will be handled. There's no LAN for The Master Chief Collection, meaning Halo 2 Anniversary games during tournaments disconnect or experience issues in the middle of a match fairly frequently. In the past events, the officials had been replaying disconnected the game from a fresh score, potentially ruining a several point lead one team had built up prior to the drop.
After much discussion and many requests for changes by players, the officials will now reset the game with the scores in tact. Here are the new changes:
- For Capture the Flag matches and Assault matches, the exact score will be taken from the time of the interruption. For example, if a team is leading a match 4-0 and there is a match interruption, the match will be replayed with an aggregate or "understood" score of 4-0, rather than a full 0-0 restart.
- For Team Slayer matches, the exact score will be taken from the time of the interruption. For example, if a team is leading a match 35-30 and there is a match interruption, the match will be replayed with an aggregate or "understood" score of 35-30, rather than a full 0-0 restart.
- For Oddball and King of the Hill, the match will be replayed with both team scores rounding down to the nearest 5 point increment. For example, if a team is leading 118-63 at the time of interruption, the match will be replayed with an aggregate or "understood" score of 115-60.
The finals are set for an unspecified date in March, with more online tournaments and one more LAN event to take place before then.
