Yes to the concepts. An ODST and Elite season would be very welcome.
Also yes to the SMG. This game could use a real close-mid range bullet hose. Make it super inaccurate, but have a silly rate of fire, like the CE AR. There isn’t really anything like that in this game.
I’m gonna say no to the Plasma Rifle and BPR though. It pains me to say it, but the existence of the Plasma Rifle often corresponds with the Plasma Pistol’s semi-auto fire being made purposely weak (exception being Reach, where the Rifle was made purposely weak and for a long time wasn’t even in MM, while the PP was balanced to completely replace it and was awesome). There’s already a big push to buff the PP because it’s weak in Infinite. Adding the PR would damage any chance it has of getting those buffs. Maybe if we didn’t get the SMG there’d be room for the BPR… But the same could be said about the next weapon.
Storm Rifle is a maybe? But I’d still rather just see the PP be a little bit more viable, and the Storm Rifle would have a hard time finding a place between the SMG and Assault Rifle in terms of function. It’d basically be forced into a Tier-2 weapon that is a flat upgrade of the automatic archetype (like the SAW). Also if they were to do it, I’d want it to be the Plasma Repeater instead, I much, much prefer the design of it. Like I said above, if the SMG or BPR aren’t added there would be room for this one.
Plasma Caster is a cool weapon. It was very unique for its time, like if the Halo 2 brute shot was given a more powerful version of the Plasma Pistol’s overcharge. But the Cindershot is so similar to it now. And the Ravager is like a different take on the “Brute Shot + enhanced PP overcharge” idea, just more akin to 3’s Brute Shot instead of 2’s.
I’d like to pitch the idea of adding the classic Carbine instead. But tweaked to have a more unique niche than before. Instead of being your usual kind of precision weapon, it’ll instead lean into its lore of firing miniature fuel rods, by having its rounds explode on impact for an admittedly small but occasionally useful aoe (such as being able to hit the ground at the feet of a Spartan, or the wall behind them and still do damage, or actually damage two Spartans if they are touching eachother). The tradeoff being it doesn’t actually one shot the head anymore. Instead just dealing bonus headshot damage like non-precision weapons. Let’s say we want to keep it’s optimal 7-8 shot ttk from the rest of the franchise, it would drain shields in 5 shots, and finish enemies off in 2-3 additional headshots or 5-6 additional body shots.
When I talk about it firing explosive rounds, I’m visualizing it in my head as being similar to the Explosive Payload perk in Destiny, or the alternate fire of the Pheonix pistol in Perfect Dark…