Parties, Parties, Parties

With the introduction of Halo Reach, the term "party" has gotten a little confusing on Xbox Live.  I know it can be a little tricky to figure out sometimes, but please bear with us as we work around the technology because it IS useful.  There are two kinds of parties:

1. Xbox Live "chat" party: This is via the Xbox Live interface itself, is title-agnostic, is persistent irrespective of what the game is doing, and people can join from separate games or apps within Xbox Live.  The party system here supports up to 8 people at one time and is for chatting only.  Because it is a chat feature, the chatting is mutually-exclusive with game chat, you can only be chatting in one system or the other.  The implication is that if you are in an XBL chat party, you can't chat with anybody not in the party, even if they're on your team.  In Halo, you'll see the "speaker" icon next to somebody's name turn into a "chat bubble" icon if they're in a separate Xbox Live "chat" party.  You'll see us use this kind of party when we have 8 people or less, and are playing in game types on separate teams.  It's entertaining to be able to chat with everyone in the clan even though we're on separate teams (like in zombies, or 4v4 Halo games).
2. Halo Reach party: This is a mechanic within the Halo game, is title-specific, only applies within Halo Reach, and is how we stay together through matchmaking and other playlists.  The party system here supports up to 16 people at one time, supports chatting as well as keeping friends together from game to game.  In the matchmaking lobby, everybody (up to all 16 people) can chat together.  Once a game starts however, chat is ONLY enabled for the people on your team in that specific game.  This means that if we get split into separate teams, you will not be able to chat with folks on the other team.  That makes it less fun because you miss out on the smack talk, but also makes it much harder to coordinate things like achievement boosting.

People seem to "get" the  Halo Reach party system pretty well and seem to understand how to use the active roster to queue up if you join late.  Most of the confusion stems from around starting and stopping XBL chat parties.  I'll often start these and leave these running, but when we have more than 8 people (like last night), I have to drop out of it so that we can hear our 9th person.  The video below does a good job of showing how to start and join XBL chat parties.  Note that at 1:44 it shows how you can join a chat party without an invite.  This is important because it takes the system several seconds to send each invite and sometimes the invites get lost in the ether.  As a result, I'll send invites to everyone but you may be left by yourself as the only person not in chat if you're actually waiting for the invite to arrive.  Instead, you can join the party proactively and instantly as soon as you see my "speaker" icon change into the "chat bubble."  The video also show you how to start XBL chat parties.  For those of you higher-ranked Halo Reach veterans, you can expect me to promote you to party leader if I need to step away, so you should know how to start and manage chat parties, and when to use them or quit out of them.

As an aside, the active roster is the preferred way for you to join the Halo Reach game party if you're the odd one out.  We occasionally have folks who are having internet problems and need to restart or whatever.  When possible, I will try to take the clan into a custom game where we can fool around while we wait.  The big advantage of this is that you can join a custom game on the fly even if we've already started.  You don't need an invite, just find my name in either the Halo Reach menu or the Xbox Live menu and choose "Join Party" (Halo Reach) or "Join Game" (XBL).