In classic Halo that encounter is determined by a series of events before hand, not just at the menu. There was a rush to the sword or a fight for it. There was a rush for the camo or a fight for it. If you were an informed player, you knew the general vicinity of a sword user or a camo user, and you either avoided it or went for a risky maneuver. If you weren't informed, then the result is an unsuspecting camo sword death, but you had the opportunity off spawn to notice that camo and sword were not at their spawn. And in death you knew the positioning of the player.
With Reach and 4, that is negated. You can now spawn with a mini-shotgun in your back pocket. You can spawn with camo in your back pocket. And an opposing player doesn't know that until it is too late.
Let's take the high ground argument from both the position of the high ground rocketeer and the victim. In classic Halo, the rocketeer knew that the player below was a probable kill. In Halo 3, there was the chance that the victim had a bubble shield and there was no way for the rocketeer to know that unless they knew that the bubble shield wasn't at its spawn. And even then, it might be in the back pocket of one of the other players. In Halo Reach, the victim might have spawned with AL, and there's no way for the attacker to know. They might have spawned with Jetpack, enabling them to avoid it altogether and get at an offensive position on the attacker. In 4(although less effective) that player may have spawned with Hardlight. The latter of the examples, that attacker has no idea what the enemy has spawned with.
Now from the victim's perspective. This situation is similar to the sword camo situation. The player should know that the rocket is gone and a general position of the enemy that has it. If not, then that is on the player.
Short term memory can only hold around seven items, give or take a few based on level of concentration. When 8 abilities are thrown at the player before the game even starts, it forces more concentration on the abilities and their counters, moreso than the game variables themselves. Now Jaime refers to the short term memory in terms of cooldown design and how long the brain retains that information, it can be applied to most levels of game design. One of the main reasons why I'm opposed to the Ability design is that it is throwing more variables at me than I need. There's not a great chance that I'm going to be facing a Hologram player, but if I am I need to know what counters it. Multiply that times eight just for armor abilities (not including perks) and there's already an information overload. To top it off, the abilities aren't balanced.
I want to use Luke's quote about Halo: "Two men enter, the better man leaves. The lesser man is respawning and that's Halo." Now two men are entering, the one with the ability counter leaves. The other one is respawning and that's new Halo.