I wanted to post something more elaborate but I will probably not do it until tomorrow.
Once resource gathering will be more developed, and properly limited by players amount, you will probably have to make choices in term of crafting and I'm sure weapons will look more valuable then. Not everyone will like the same weapons, and maps and enemies you face will have an impact on that choice as well. You should come to the conclusion that having two weapons to adapt to situations is a big plus, and that pair of weapons can also change a lot from a player to another.
Then, don't forget that Tiers 3 weapons will come too, hard if not impossible to craft and so very appealing to loot and use. Just as Gauss pistols have been on 2238 for example. Armors too will play their role. We miss some learning system for the MK2 and MK3 versions that'll come at some point, so they'll be less easy to craft. There are also rarer armors, like Support combat armors and PAs that will be interesting to look for. Faction combat armors should also be interesting to obtain and not farmable. Finally, there are all those other items that will be really interesting to loot on players, like doctor bags, traps, drugs, stealthboys or smoke grenades for example, which are always useful and that will make the difference between more and less rich platoons.
So yeah, you roughly get the same weapons as your opponent and you can stand a chance as a newcomer, but those who will smartly use all the possible items and tactics will be victorious at the end. No need to grind for 3 months and take bad habits, just start working on your pvp skills from day 1, that's the idea.
As John said, there is a plan to personalize your gun and make it become a sort of relic of the Wasteland (not to say legendary weapon :p) by using it in PvP (among other possible ways), possibly renaming it or adding successive kinds of titles to it. However, we need a lot of stuff to be balanced first, and we could not decide of the best way to implement it. That's why it has been postponed for now.