Being able to pick your starting weapons and armor should be a part of the character customization process, but for some reason we don't have that option.
We actually used to be able to pick our starting armor, but lost that feature somewhere along the way.
Some might argue that these items will become replaced quickly, but that's not something new players are going to know or be comforted by when being frustrated by this during character creation. There are also several combat opportunities prior to finding specific upgrades, and I suspect players are going to want to use their preferred loadout from the start.
