Honestly, the one issue with the loadouts in Reach that I never understood was how they didn't give players clear, obvious indications of who was packing what.
In TF2, part of the brilliance of the aesthetic is that the unique silhouettes of each character class can be recognized at a distance, and you can anticipate and adapt your tactics with the knowledge of your opponent's weapons, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.
I don't have a problem with each player having something another player doesn't, because every armor ability in play is available to every player, and balanced by opportunity cost. You want the mobility of jet pack? Ok, then you don't get the benefit of cloak, or armor lock, or sprint, etc.
It was the 'Surprise! I have armor lock!' element that got annoying, because you had no way of knowing and taking their ability into consideration.
Oh, and the maps sucked. That was an issue. The DLC helped, but obviously you can't expect or demand that players pay to download extra content to fix a weakness of the shipped product.
Eh. Maybe that would have helped. But it's not like I'm going to do any good knowing someone has armor lock. I'm boned either way, most of the time.
I just feel that loadouts are not for Halo. Even though everyone has the option to choose their loadouts, I still feel that abilities were a cheap way to add that variety.
It also promoted all kinds of stupid, overly reliant playstyles: you have the runner, you have the guy constantly armor locking to buy some time (armor lock in general was annoying), you have the stealth ghost, an ability completely ruined by the scrambler and the nerfed invisibility effect, you have the jetpacks which likely contributed to the crappy map designs.
But, regardless, all these abilities just add a misbalance. Yeah, I can give up mobility if I choose armor lock, but what does it matter?
Abilities just added an annoying element of randomness. I think what makes Halo so great is that the intensity came down to how you played your limited, tightly constricted set of tools. There's nothing the enemy has that you don't. There's no sudden sprint/dash. Everything just... plays like clockwork. There's just this flow to everyone moving the same speed, and the only speed, and controlling the map, where everything comes down to how you shoot and throw grenades, knowing where everyone is spawning/coming from, and knowing the location of power weapons.
If abilities were a pickup, like the power weapons/overshield/camo, it may have been interesting. It may have been interesting if I had to pick up a speed up/sprint ability, a jetpack to get me to places others couldn't get to, an armor lock to help me buy time.
If abilities were pickups, they would be so much more significant, both to the gameplay, but also the flow/metagame of controlling the map.
It would have likely even helped design better maps, as they wouldn't be designed with sprint and jetpacks as a main philosophy, but rather, sprint and jetpacks would offer a strategic availability.
I just didn't like Reach for the loadouts, which I felt influenced bad map designs.
I think having a Halo game where you added abilities with the visual indication you suggest, + balance philosophy of power weapons, would have made for a better game.
