There is a huuuge gap between the worst and the best weapon. A lot of equipment in EU is basicly worthless crap, which stats become so useless for its segment. A lot of different low level guns that still sits on old system where you need level 100 to max it out.
Its a shame they never made upgrade missions for these, would give a ton of low level players a chance to own and shoot something somewhat decent UL gun, instead of relying on (L) Weapons that you're never going to love.
Also, there's a huuuge gap in all segments from the worst to the best gun, investing 10.000 ped in low level gear would still give you quite the edge from a causual 500 ped setup. This is the same across all segments in the game.
The real big downside to that is, either you have to adjust/nerf systems for a worse return in general to compensate for those high end setup's not breaking the game making money all the time, or you as a developer have to accept that in order for people to pursuit that kind of capabilities, they need someone in the front to advertice what a money maker setup you'll get if you invest 10.000 ped instead of 500 ped.
But that means eventually once more & more good equipment avatars gets assembled, then you are forced to compensate and nerf the system to ensure the regular "income" is returning, leaving a cycle of releasing new "dream" equipment thats better than anything before it, to keep this cycle of investing and fighting to get it alive.
Once they introduced rings with buffs, not long after they begin introducing weapons / armors with buffs, because its almost impossible to keep this cycle alive on upgrading "basic stats" all segments have 90+ efficiency weapons now, only way to keep the cycle is to attach buffs to them now.
Its a dark path, very much so because once they keep nerfing returns to compensate and level out to the better equipment, the old, old equipment becomes obselete and does in theory bring worse returns than ever before.
There is other ways to design a game, and it haven't always been how they designed it.