I know you said that this isn't really a Star Wars question, but there is a very important part of the Star Wars system that is getting overlooked here, and it may have factored into your friends decision. Star Wars is a Vitality/WP system. If you get a critical hit, your damage goes directly to Wound Points (your WP are equal to your Con score - if they go to 0 you are dead), and if you survive the hit to your wound points, you have to make a Fort save to stay concious.
The more chances you have to roll that 20, the better the weapon is. After playing in two separate Star Wars campaigns, the big fights never came down to reducing Vitality points, it came down to getting a critical hit. And the folks that could attack the most often (or could get a good crit range) were the ones scoring the kills.
(Oddly enough, that pretty much meant that the unarmed martial artists were the deadliest opponents to face. Lightsaber fighters were the second deadliest, pretty much because they didn't need to crit, they could carve through your Vitality like it was butter.)