I would like to inform everyone from a unanimous decision that the timing rules for Spartan Ops are going to be changed to "start of player control until the prompt of chapter complete, or episode complete" instead of "time starts after selecting loadout and ends at the prompt of chapter complete, or episode complete." We made this change for a few reasons: #1, some levels do not start with custom loadouts, and #2, makes timing coop difficult.

#1. This was first brought to my attention when playing episode 6, chapter 1, in which your character starts with the same default weapons no matter what. This created some concerns on whether we start the time when we load into the level or on gain of control. We concluded that to keep consistency between chapters and episodes, which is where we came up with the two proposed timing methods: The method mentioned above, and start timer upon loading into the level, which brings me into my second point.

#2. It made timing in coop difficult. The second method proposed would be a huge disadvantage to coop since the loadout time is usually longer than solo due to connection delay, and waiting on everyone to select a loadout. The old timing method was also quite difficult to time, because you would have to start the timer based on the last person to choose their loadout, which can be quite difficult to accurately time.

Because of these reasons, the timing rules are changing to "start of player control until the prompt of chapter complete, or episode complete"