The Yappening (Halo Wars 2)

The Yappening is the name a humourous in-game event occaisionally created by 343 Industries around April 1. The event has occurred in 2018 and 2019, with the 2018 event taking place in-game on Halo Wars 2 and the 2019 event in Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The Yappening is fictionally (albeit non-canonically) framed through the lens of Yapyap the DESTROYER gaining access to 343's servers and using it to wreac havoc in the games. The events typically come with limited-time changes to game functionality, often for comedic effect.

Halo Wars 2 (2018)

Previous:	Season 9
Next:	Season 10
The Yappening
Start date:	March 29, 2018
End date:	April 2, 2018
Includes content for:	Halo Wars 2

The Yappening, also referred to in the Halo Wars 2 API as Season 9.5, was the by technicality the tenth season of Halo Wars 2 to launch, beginning on March 29, 2018. The season followed Season 9 and was succeeded by Season 10 on April 2, 2018. The season's emblem is represented by a Methane Wagon.

Overview

The Yappening in Halo Wars 2.

On March 28, 2018, a blog post was submitted to Halo Waypoint by Yapyap, detailing that he had found a Forerunner artifact called the "Key of Balance", which promptly began speaking to him about the responsibility of balance. Yapyap proceeded to talk with the key and eventually destroyed it, using the key to bring about change. This post was updated by Jeff Easterling purporting that the post was not authorised by anyone on the Waypoint team, then later again updated noting that the event had also affected Halo Wars 2 game files, with a list of patch notes detailing the limited-time event changes over the weekend. The effects given initially only affected unit balance, but went on to affect leader powers, skirmish, Terminus Firefight, matchmaking, playlist names and the campaign level Under the Dark. Notably, the changes in particular affected Yapyap's gameplay, giving massive buffs to his units and starting army, culminating in Yapyap being given his own Season.

Development

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Balance and game changes

Global

• To obtain power to upgrade your base, you must capture power nodes.
• Every leader has a larger starting army to help fight over power nodes and power crates.
• Leader Powers are all free and can be gained faster.
• Leader Power cooldowns have been lowered for every leader as well. (1 minute for active drops, 2 minutes for unit drops, 3 minutes for ultimate leader powers)
• Generators and Power Extractors now produce supplies.
• Main base structures provide a small trickle of power over the course of the game.
• Health for Bases, mini-bases, production buildings, and turrets have all gone up.
• Health for expansion bases has increased, but not as much as upgraded bases.
• Units across the board have been altered with new weapon types and damage modifiers.
• T1 does units do low building damage. T2 does more, T3 does a lot more, and Ultimate Units such as the Condor and Scarab are game enders for stalemates.
• T3 units all cost a very small amount of power.
• Condors and Scarabs cost 4000/4000 but are significantly stronger and kill buildings faster.
• All unit upgrades, global upgrades, and armory/war council upgrades cost supply
• Global upgrades effectiveness has been increased in up to 20%/40%/60%.
• All unit upgrades have been lowered to 100 supplies.
• Turrets now build in roughly 15 seconds minus siege turrets.
• Shields have not been changed in any way.

Unit Specific Changes

• UNSC Airpad is now a Tier 1 building and allows Nightingales to be built early game.
• Snipers and Rangers are both now T2.
• Locusts and Kodiaks are now Tier 3 units.
• Flamers, Rangers, and Suicide Grunts now have more units in their squad.
• Hero units now are stronger vs buildings.
• Character models have been updated for several units in the game.

Playlists and Matchmaking UI Changes

• Yap = ranked 1v1
• YapYap = ranked 2v2
• YapYapYap = ranked 3v3
• Updated deathmatch to be called “The Yappening” so it appears under the “Modes” for deathmatch.
• Updated loading screens for deathmatch game mode outlining the new goals of the game mode.
• Updated matchmaking background screens to be grunt themed.

Leader Specific Changes

• Arbiter
  • Plasma bolt now uses a lot more shots.
• Atriox
  • Eradication’s area of effect is much larger.
• Anders
  • Multiple waves of ark defense now spawn instead of only having 1.
• Cutter
  • Close air support now spawns many more pelicans in waves.
  • ODST drop now spawns 10 ODSTs instead of 3.
  • Cutter’s spartan Jerome has been replaced by the ODST hero unit from the Spearbreaker campaign.
• Isabel
  • Mac blast now gives additional shots for each point spent on this leader power.
• Shipmaster
  • Raid is now 2 points instead of a 3-point leader power and the upgrades condense to reflect this change.
• Decimus
  • Fury is over 10x stronger at the highest tier.
  • Decimus when dropped in now does a lot more damage and his unit’s health has doubled.
• Forge
  • Scatter bomb now hits a lot harder than it used to.

Kinsano

• • When you purchase heat of battle, Kinsano’s Kodiaks and siege turrets now leave a pool of fire behind that does damage over time.
• Colony
  • Colony now has teleport.
• Sergeant Johnson
  • EMP Mac now buffs units significantly more when targeting your own units.
• Jerome
  • Omega Team now rides Mac blasts down as they spawn because why not?
  • Enduring Salvo now does damage as if a ship is falling on you because it is.
• Serina
  • Her warthogs are now for lack of a better term frost hogs that now use cryo spray to freeze units.
  • Ice barriers now spawn more barriers at each tier.
• Voridus
  • His hero unit now spawns infusion for significantly longer amount of time.
• Pavium
  • Rain of fire now spawns more damage dealing beams at each tier of the ability.
  • Burnout no longer impacts unit production times.
• YapYap THE DESTROYER
  • 6 hero units instead of 3 can be built now.
  • He has more turrets in his turret drops.
  • Starting army is just literally OP….
  • He also has a 101 pop starting army.
  • And Cannon fodder has an increased capture rate on power nodes to better resemble other units.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection (2019)

Yappening splash screen for The Master Chief Collection.

Yappening menu art for The Master Chief Collection.

The Yappening returned again on April 3, 2019, this time nicknamed The Yappening: Two Yaps This Time. A blog post was once again posted on Waypoint by Yapyap, detailing how the Grunt had remembered the event a year ago, and decided to repeat it. His troops brought him several items (themselves tongue-in-cheek references to existing lore) such as Janus Keys, slipspace flakes, a "Fragment of Divinity" and pistachios, with Yapyap failing to get them to yield any tangible result. Yapyap then destroyed the assembled artifacts with plasma grenades, resulting in a mysterious voice conferring Yapyap as the true protector of the Mantle, among other grand titles. The event then sparked a similar series of events internally at 343 Industries, resulting in a dedicated Yappening splash screen, menu art, nameplates and playlist being created inside The Master Chief Collection 2v2 Halo 2 matchmaking. The Yappening playlist consisted of several unique gametypes;

• Head-pop Party! - SWAT, albeit with the Grunt Birthday Party Skull activated.
• Yappening Wargames - Fiesta Slayer, with the additional effect of randomly removing a random heads-up display element on respawn. Each round fired in a weapon fires two ammunition per shot.
• Brute Shoot - Players have Brute Shots with bottomless magazine and physics from projectiles and explosives are magnified.
• Methane Moshpit - King of the Hill with all players given high health and needlers with bottomless magazines, with the intention being to use supercombine explosions to push players out of the hill.
• Yapyap's Ball Grab - Oddball with rocket launchers.
• Beamish Bonanza - A "big team invisible low gravity SWAT vehicle fiesta mode" - players have no shields, active camouflage, a battle rifle, random secondary weapon and a randomized vehicle set.

The Yappening nameplates were unlocked as follows;

• Yapyap THE DESTROYER - Complete seven social matches in the Yappening playlist.

• Shut Your Yap - Headshot 250 Grunts on Heroic difficulty or higher in campaign or Spartan Ops.

The Yappening update accompanied a series of regular title update changes for Master Chief Collection, detailed in the same blog post.