For a long time I have been looking at these forums since Halo Reach. I have never wanted to post on these forums , but I have to get this out of my chest. And hopefully 343 or the community can take my opinions into account.
Since I probably need a background to be taken seriously here, This is my background:
Played all the halos
Started Multiplayer With halo 3(Don’t think I need to say more)
Halo was never about skill or competitiveness.
Part 1
I love Halo just as much as anyone else but the madness needs to subside.
The real and true reason that people started to leave halo was because of other games. Ever since modern warfare 2 came out people were slowly drifting to Call of duty because, in these peoples eyes, it was the superior game. Not because it was easier, not because it appealed to kids, but it just had More.
Customization on not how you looked like but on your loadouts that you were allowed to change to according to your playstyle. Killstreaks that give you something to go for while having your heart pounding to stay alive. An RPG xp-based system to always keep you playing in order to unlock something. And the chaos of small maps. These are the things Halo didn’t have.
I’m not trying to praise COD or shame Halo, but back in 2010 halo Reach was my main game until Black Ops, my first COD, came out. I didn’t like it at first, but after playing it a while, Halo felt Backwards. Since then, I have always played more COD than Halo.
Part 2
After observing these forums, my conclusion is that Casual gamers are Normal Gamers and the competitive ones are Serious Gamers.
These “Classical” aspects such as No Sprint, No ADS, “Skill Jumps” instead of clambering, and others are old mechanics. We need to look to the future if we want to keep and maintain the Halo Player Base. The real reason Halo 4’s population dropped so quickly was because of Black ops 2, nothing else. If people really hated the new aspects of Halo 4 then nobody would have been playing the new COD either. Halo 4 had things on the right track track but it is just that, in the eyes of the people, Black ops 2 was the better game. Had the new COD not been released Halo 4 would still have a strong population.
To me, Halo 4 had modernized correctly and people loved it. But since the population dropped people blamed the game and not the industry.
Part 3
I think Halo 5 can still be a great and popular game like people want it to be , but in order to not be destroyed by Black Ops 3 next year, the developers at 343 need to add MORE and not strip down back to old mechanics.
Bring back loadouts. With Rock-Paper-Scissors type loadouts it should be just the same as having equal loadouts appealing to Normal and Serious gamers. Increase player capacity!!! This is Next-Gen, we need to play what could not be achieved on the previous consoles. 32 v 32 player matches, more vehicles, more guns, dynamic weather, just More, Bigger, and Better!
Part 4
I feel the serious gamers want to hold Halo back because of feel and skill gap. The truth is that It is all in your head.
If you think about it COD and Halo in general aren’t that different from eachother. You shoot, kill, respawn. People say that Halo is harder because you need to stay on target because of long kill time and in COD you just spray and pray. Lets be honest, it is not hard to stay on target since there is no recoil in halo plus you spam your grenades and boom they are dead. In COD you need to be aware of your surroundings because you can get shot any where and it is hard to stay alive, thus, the gratification of killstreaks. They say you can just simply camp in to get kills but that is an easier way to die since someone always knows your hiding spot.
Again, I am not praising COD, I am just saying that Halo being a little more like it will not make it “easy”.
The Serious gamers feel that sprint and thruster pack give players a chance evade death when they shouldn’t. With that logic we should just run up to the enemy, do nothing, and let them kill us. We are all trying to evade death! Thruster pack and sprint allow new ways get around our enemies with tactics. Not everything is going die at the end of your gun.
Final Part
I might sound like a COD player trying to change Halo into a generic shooter, but I am a Normal Gamer that enjoys playing halo and wants to see it be better than it is. I may have come off harsh against the serious gamers but it would not be ideal to just abandon them. Halo 5 should have a separate playlist that has no loadouts and had the correct mechanics they see fit.
To me halo was built by Normal gamers. It was just meant to be mindless and fun while having a little tense competition to it. I know people still love Halo and it is far from dead, but it needs to Modernize in order to gain and maintain its playerbase against its competitors.
Too Lazy Didn’t Read: In order to not get Wiped out by Black ops 3 on Xbox One Halo 5 needs to keep its modernization and be Bigger and Better than ever. As long as there is Master Chief in the game, it will always be Halo and never lose its identity.This is open for discussion. Feel free to argue with me if you disagree. 
Please don’t be hostile.