I fully agree with the OP on this; I play on Ebon Hawk Pub side, and there are always the same group of players who use headsets and absolutely crushes any and all competition; it's disheartening and extremely frustrating trying to get enough tokens to gear up my toons when all I can get are table scraps because the PVP grouping is so lop-sided.
I literally just earned enough tokens to get my first tier 1 armor piece yesterday, and my subscription is nearly up; when it does expire, I might as well give up any notion of ever being able to see my Jedi Knight in all MK-15 vindicator armor; it'll take years to build up enough tokens to get full MK-15 gear as a non-sub. And I can't do ops because I work 15 hour days and have to help with my kids during the evening, so I just don't have the time to do group ops.
What I really wish is that bioware would do away with the unassembled gear pieces altogether and make it so that you could buy gear with command tokens; that would really make gearing up faster and easier, and it would also keep the vendor areas on the fleets less cluttered.