My opinion:
Power weapons in halo are suppose enhance enjoyment and empower the player here is how I feel they work and how the boltshot effects these their use:
1. Standard Combat - grenade, fire and melee this is combat with no power weapons, the power weapons are something to be sought after, earned and controlled; empowering the player and rewarding effort with greater chances of success and a greater fear of losing that which they worked hard to get, classic risk/reward.
The boltshot reduces the need to seek these weapons since your already start with a fantastic close range weapon you can get good results without that effort or risk not to mention time to acquire, and with no reason to fear death you simple respawn with a fresh weapon. Play moves away from the pillar that is standard combat and towards luring players within the kill range. The risk/reward is greatly reduced.
2. Team play and objective control - Team play works so well in halo because you have a longer time between first contact with an enemy and death in any standard combat situation this gives teams working together opportunity to react and backup friends allowing players to control locations/objectives when working together swapping shields and leading to enjoyable scenarios of saving your friends and feeling team spirit. Again power weapons should be invaluable in these situations as ammo for the defenders power weapons dwindles attackers should gain advantage and longer survival for defenders requires more and more skill.
Add the boltshot to this situation and the grinding effect of the attackers is lost since the powerful weapons are refreshed after ever death and as long as a few members of the team survive they will respawn at that location if not nearby boltshot refilled. Attackers actually have an even harder time as defenders are rewarded with success for staying still and allowing the attackers to come into effective boltshot range. Team cooperation is also reduced in these defending situations since a single shot will get the kill only one player needs fire the shot instead of a combination of fire from two or more.
The single issue with the boltshot, again in my opinion, is availability. When everyone spawns with snipers we have a separate match for that, if everyone spawned with rockets, an extreme form of one shot kill, standard combat would be destroyed, if we all started with scatter shots it's clear to me which weapon I'd have out when in close quarters.
3. Top trumps - Power weapons are suppose to trump starting weapons to drive the players to these weapons and allow tactical interactions based on acquiring and holding these items. Maps are designed with these weapons in these locations to lead to these battles and keep the game flowing. If starting weapons can trump these weapons too easily then the risk starts to outweigh the reward and the player isn't driven to these conflicts and instead develops the tactics to make their weapon more successful, sadly for the boltshot this leads to many unsavoury and often frustrating behaviours that doesn't move Halo in the direction that's going to be most enjoyable for all the players involved.
