I'm going to suggest a controversial alternative to all the ones you suggested, though it combines parts of what you said.

I think a potentially fair, yet game changing load out is this:

Primary weapons stay exactly the same.

No Secondary slot, everyone has a sidearm equipped, acts as sidearms do now (including spawn with ammo).

Special and Heavy Weapons are combined. If a traditionally heavy weapon is equipped, ammo should drop as max 2 rockets, and one clip of an HMG. If a special weapon is equipped, 1.5x the normal ammo is dropped (Should be between 6-10 rounds ideally, perhaps 8-12 would be better). Heavy weapon ammo disappears on death, special cut in half. (We could certainly tweak this, just an idea).

Several things occur in this scenario:

1) Primary weapon choice is VERY important as this will be your primary engagement weapon. Probably why they named it such.

2) Personally, I love sidearms, I'm a bit biased here (I enjoy running a Scout Rifle, Sidearm loadout from time to time). That being said, sidearms are NOT one hit kills, but are intended for close quarters combat. They still require skill to kill your opponent. It's a pretty fair game when two people are sidearming each other. This gives you a weapon to use in CQB.

3) Heavy and Secondary become more precious (a goal of Bungie) and force the player to make a choice between what kind of weapon they want in this slot.

That's my suggestion. What say ye?

I really like this, and it seems possible to implement within the current framework of the game. My thoughts about it are more complicated and would fundamentally change how we play.

Primary weapons stay exactly the same.
No Secondary slot, everyone has a sidearm equipped, acts as sidearms do now (including spawn with ammo).
Special and Heavy Weapons are combined. If a traditionally heavy weapon is equipped, ammo should drop as max 2 rockets, and one clip of an HMG. If a special weapon is equipped, 1.5x the normal ammo is dropped (Should be between 6-10 rounds ideally, perhaps 8-12 would be better). Heavy weapon ammo disappears on death, special cut in half. (We could certainly tweak this, just an idea).

I think this would seriously diminish any desire to use short-range primaries. Why would I choose a Hand Cannon or Auto Rifle when everyone, including me, has a side arm?

This sounds reasonable for PvP. I think it's a horrible idea for PvE.

Snipers are often the go-to weapon for PvE boss fights. This would destroy ammo balance for PvE raiding and more difficult PvE content -- you'd essentially be bringing back the heavy weapon synth problem we saw during Crota hard mode. Not fun.

Special and Heavy Weapons are combined. If a traditionally heavy weapon is equipped, ammo should drop as max 2 rockets, and one clip of an HMG. If a special weapon is equipped, 1.5x the normal ammo is dropped (Should be between 6-10 rounds ideally, perhaps 8-12 would be better). Heavy weapon ammo disappears on death, special cut in half. (We could certainly tweak this, just an idea).

That's my suggestion. What say ye?

Love it completely. As they stand, sidearms don't really have much of a role. This method really creates room for them to be used more often. I've always felt that the OHK weapons should be bundled together. Snipers, shotties, rockets were all power weapons in Halo. I'm thinking 2 power weapons drops per match, maybe 3 depending on how much ammo is dropped.

I'm not sure what to do with ammo upon death. Your idea is a great start. What about bringing ammo drops from dead players again? If they had rockets only a purple brick would drop that would feed only current heavies, vs the other specials dropping traditional green bricks?

Your post is obviously PvP related, but we need to talk about PvE as well.

I liked special weapons. They shouldn't go anywhere.

In terms of PvP, I think simply staying the course plus more conscientious map design would help a lot. I never saw specials as a huge problem until recently when snipers got more popular. Part of the problem is that scope flinch is actually fake. You always still aim at the middle of your screen. I think a great change would be to make the shot always go to your reticle.

PvE is a bit different. What if special weapons were the only weapons with elemental? What if all heavy and primaries were kinetic? Suddenly fusions rifles and shotguns would get a lot more useful.

Yeah, It was a very Crucible-centric post. The current system feels far better suited to PvE than PvP.

Part of the problem is that scope flinch is actually fake. You always still aim at the middle of your screen. I think a great change would be to make the shot always go to your reticle.

If changing the shot to go to where your reticle points is too hard to implement, maybe Bungie could add reticle bloom to snipers that expands after a shot/when getting shot? Personally I think snipers should be a lot harder to use when you are getting shot at. Instead shipers should be best used when the enemy doesn't know they are about to die.

Unfortunately I can't think of a good solution for the shotgun. The real problem with shotguns isn't their range, though it certainly feels that way. The real problem is lag. I'm convinced that when I see someone shotgun me from auto-rifle range, they aren't really at that range but simply appear that way due to lag. There isn't really a good way to fix that without completely changing how the networking of Destiny works.

I want to go back to Year 1. Plentiful ammo for everything. Lowering the use of powerful weapons has only made the most powerful ones stick out more.

I kind of feel the same way. Obviously shotguns needed fixing, but House of Wolves was the best spot for PvP I think overall.

I'm not sure how Bungie drew the line between "Heavy" weapons and "special" weapons. They're all power weapons with varying strengths and weaknesses. And they all have situations where they can out-gun their counterparts.

I'm pretty sure that the biggest difference between 'Special' and 'Heavy' weapons is the need to aim in order to maximize the killing power.

I always found it strange that snipers had the highest DPS in the game. The fact that people use their specials to rapidly damage bosses seems a bit weird…

Stop destroying guns because of PvP, please.

I actually like the 3 weapon system a lot, and think that the latest update did a great job of balancing special weapons in PvP to where I think they should be: a limited resource. I pick up every special ammo box in PvP that I can now, not because I'm running low, but because it actually limits the amount the enemy can pick up. Now sniping the whole match rarely works out unless the other team ignores you standing by a special ammo spawn the whole time, and even then you have to take your shots more carefully.

I agree completely. But only beef is that I still don't think Snipers fit into their archetype. They are still used way more for mid-short range combat than they should. I feel like if snipers were put into their long range place then people would actually use fusion rifles.