Alright. When I heard you saying 'functionally comparable', I thought you meant specific classes like shotgun/inaccurate bullet hose/semiautomatic precision rifle/sniper rifle/rocket launcher.
: From a gameplay point of view
: though, the designers might not want things to be too far in favour of
: the advanced race, or the other weapons might seem unattractive and get
: underused.
Depends on how they're balanced. If they're like the support weapons in Halo 3/ODST, then they're beastly but limited in how often you come across one. You could even build entire encounters around the players having these Forerunner power weapons.
I mean, look at ODST. Could you imagine fighting on the roof of the NMPD, defending against waves of Phantoms and Banshees without an abundance of missile pods and spartan lasers?
: As a side point, where did this 'sandbox' term come from anyway? I've heard
: it a number of times in connection with gaming and it's always seemed odd
: to me. I'm guessing it's supposed to mean something like 'collection' or
: 'array', but I actually just checked Wikipedia and I don't see any
: relevant definition there.
A quick search through the archives shows that, prior to '07, sandbox meant a style of gameplay, like how GTA is a sandbox game. I suspect the current usage rose with Bungie, where they were talking about the "Brute sandbox". Afterward, the community generalized the term to refer to any faction's set of weapons.