It’s quote apparent that many people are still in favor of bringing back playable elites into the Halo franchise and for good reason. The elites are without a doubt the most iconic alien species in the Halo series, they are a challenge to fight, they have a good lore, they look incredibly bad -Yoink-, I could go on forever. However, 343 has decided to remove elites from multiplayer for reasons that are completely nonsensical and unnecessary because every Halo installment has had playable elites before Halo 4. Even Halo Reach, while incredibly limiting in when you can play as elites, still allowed you to play as them in select modes including multiplayer and gave you a variety of armor permutations to choose from.
Now back to the main purpose of this thread which is how we can incorporate elites into multiplayer in a way that makes sense and makes everyone happy?
My idea is similar to how multiplayer is set up now which is Spartans fighting each other on infinity in war games, simply take that a step further and make it so Elites and Spartans fight with and against each other on infinity or whatever ship. Why wouldn’t this work and why shouldn’t it? The Elites & Spartans have already became allies (We can clearly see this in the Halo 5 campaign) and they both respect each others fighting capabilities so there’s no reason to not suspect that they would fight each other to train.
The system would make it so that when you start your multiplayer career you can choose between either A) fighting for the Sangheli Faction and playing as an Elite to fight Spartans or B) fighting for the Human Faction and playing as a Spartan to fight Elites. It would also allow you to start an alternate multiplayer career and play as a Spartan or vise versa. Additionally, there would be modes (like Griff Ball & Infection or whatever) where you can fight alongside the opposing Faction.
In order for this system to work however we would need a larger variety of Elite armors and I believe that the Halo Reach model for elite armors would be the correct way to go except add more. Add Imperial Admiral armor, Supreme Commander armor, Arbiter armor, and etc.