If Spartan Ops is much more than Firefight and is pretty challenging like Spec Ops, I think it'll do well. All my non Halo CoD friends love that crap. Also I don't expect the name to change.
Aside from that, watching these posts from sideline developers and designers is great. Wanting things is one thing, opinions is another, but the crap being said is yet another but special thing. "Just do this" "Gears did it" "All they have to do is X". That's not how game development works, or any large scale project really. There's timelines, budgets, resources, etc. All have to be carefully planned out and decided upon. Sometimes things are too ambitious and it's better to recognize that than to dig yourself into a hole.
I don't really feel that dedicated servers are needed, I actually don't care for them as my experience with them as been poor. I think it's silly to write them off for Halo 5, 6, and beyond though. Step back and think about it. 1st game for 343. They looked to be killing it and doing great, but if they tried to do everything, it'd probably all be mediocre and in the end all the features would be there just to exist. It's easy to say "yeah but Gears, yeah but Microsoft". Well this isn't Epic, and it's hardly MS. They are simply owned by them. Separate technologies, code, skillsets, etc.