I swear it wasn't this hard 15 years ago 
I would chalk it up to being 
er but I can still jump into a random game of Gears of War and do okay, so who knows. I guess the skill ceiling in the old Halos is just much higher due to the battle-hardened diehard audience left playing them?
That's all the Halos though, even if in the following games the rifles you start out with in most game modes aren't quite as busted as the pistol.
By Halo 2, someone cranked down the effective range of the pistol from "Infiniti" to "short" which made all the difference in the world. Also, the rifle was better at mid range and you wouldn't fire bullets in every direction except the place it was pointed. Pistol was marginally better mostly in the closed maps, but you were still scrambling for the better gear when you spawned.
I meant the rifles aren't as busted as the H1 pistol. In general the rifles are still so good that there's not that much incentive to pick up any of the non-power weapons, like the Plasma Rifle, or the Needler, or whatever.
Needler was very situational, but it worked well in close quarters against guys with full shields. Plasma rifle also worked well to close, because you could get their shields down quick and then go melee.
But otherwise, sure. The starting gear tended to be good enough that you didn't need weapons or vehicles to be effective. Honestly, one of the game's brighter points. Just... no pistols across the map, thank you.