The cynic in me sees this as conditioning a Halo audience towards spending real money for virtual items - in this case power items, and even worse imo, temporary/expendable/single-use items.
Its been a dream of the bean counters from the very beginning of last gen to condition gamers to spend real money on virtual expendables. Buying ammo was the classic example, but anything expendable could do the trick. This system swings that door wide open, though I'm pretty sure it was Mass Effect 2 that jimmy'd the lock in the first place.
So, yeah, kinda gross still, but I'm very happy to see a system that (assumedly) subsidizes free post-release map packs. That's a big deal, and a big problem in multplayer games, so its nice to see a real answer to it.
Now, when the Xbox launched last year we saw some launch titles like Rye and Forza had microtransactions, macrotransactions and free-to-play elements. This year we're seeing both Forza 6 and Halo 5 with game altering collectible cards and packs and rarities - and the similarities and differences are interesting. Forza hasn't monetized the packs in any way, and as far as I know they aren't used in competitive modes. Halo will monetize the packs, but has limited the game changing stuff to Warzone only, leaving Arena with the even starts the fans have demanded. The fact that both games come with these new systems makes me question the blog post's tale of this idea springing out of the team, as opposed to something that's more of a demand from the higher ups. It'll be interesting to see how these different takes play out, and what survives and what gets scrapped in the next games.