Everyone still starts on equal footing. When I played I scored best on my team at level 0 when everyone else was running around with light rifles and DMRs. The weapons you start with are all balanced. You rank up slow if you suck, good performance makes you rank up faster. In my brief time playing, there were never any abilities or starting weapons that made me feel like the game was unfair.

Also, in custom games/forge, you can set the games spawning and mp rules to be just like H2/3. So yeah.