specs are always important but not in terms of reach and halo 4's customization and option to change mid game. What your specific character brings to a match should be what you have for the game number 1, and any weapon you start with should be able to cross map someone yes but the range should make it much more difficult unlike the dmr's magical headshot hitscan recognition

Why are you talking about Halo? Halo has absolutely zero to do with what I'm talking about.

every game has to do with this, halo was just an easy example. If you ever played pvp at a high level on an mmo or armored core for answer for example specs are the most important thing on the planet but to many people aline specs with abilities. in terms of competitiveness it just comes down to a balanced playing field without weapons that incredibly easily overpower one side. i.e. AR start on the pit when the other team all have battle rifles. I would win games 10-50 np against your average set of kids because power weapons aside the br's took over the map. However, the game was still balanced. Some people would call competitive games stripped down and games without enough customization to remove the inbalances created by the creators themselves get overlooked. Always better to lean on the side of more customization but balance is still the balanced playing field is key, but that just means if one side gets a nuke, so must the other. Your problem is mostly solved by a complete and worthy game, which we dont see many of anymore. take dota 2 for example, you have a ton of characters and while there are a few bans you can use before the start of each game with a large number of what the 5v5 teams can look like. So the game just has to be good. Would abilities work in multiplayer? yes why wouldnt they? why would you take them out? Why would magic not come into play while spec'ing your abilities if your the teams mage? You don't mention halo, ask me why im mentioning it but in the end what is destiny without magic other then halo? halo with an open world, new universe, new classes, new story, no chief.

That's fine, everyone has a different view on what they find "competitive". My quarrels with stuff like this is it leads to randomness.

well human beings are randomness. If you set up a 3v3, and had a warlock, a titan, and a hunter go at it and removed the obvious abilities like 1 hit kill spells or crazy overpowered guns like the scarab gun from halo 2, the only randomness you would have is the randomness of the human mind and the decisions it makes. Going back to making a great game, lets assume every weapon and ability we didnt remove works exactly the way it should. Will we still see the randomness of players getting killed through weird explosions of grenades blowing up rockets blowing up grenades? yes. The game knows booms make other booms go boom and we all have booms and through them all at eachother at point blank range half the time and the games code has to figure it out. You cant remove randomness, its impossible. if your talking about weapons and abilities like boltshot from halo 4, the sword or noob combo from halo 2, or people who focus on "cheap tactics" like halo 3's armor lock or spawning with a jetpack and a dmr so you can spawn and instantly fly to the top of the map where most players dont go to because they used sprint, or hologram and just laying down fire and abusing that combo that is just the definition of a bad game with bad mechanics. or spawn killing, which is a tactic when the games spawn system isint crap. Both teams start on a level playing field and if you suck so hard that the other team is killing you as you spawn then your either unlucky and got matched against people much more skilled then you or your playing a game with a crappy ranking system. Playing consistently on my lvl 50 mlg halo 3 i would get spawn trapped every other game for a life here and there but i did it just as much to other teams if not more. randomness happens in every game case and point http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYxnTSziWAA that is randomness at its best.