Well... Did you played the first one before on the home consoles/pc? I assume not.
First of all, do not go straight to the end of the mainquest. It's filled with sidequests and they give you sweet sweet loot. Enjoy the humour and the characters, each one is unique (even the NPC). If you have the dlc's you have 6 playable characters instead of the vanilla 4.
Try them, each one is versatile but specialized in one category (ex. Zer0 is your stealth guy), also they are customizable in their appereance and skills.
The loot: Each weapon/shield/class mod it's different. They are generated randomly (most of them, not the ''Unique (blue) and Legendaries (orange), they usually drop from bosses or at the end of a quest and they have fixed effects/stats)
And, the last advice is:
@Chrisssj2 enjoy the game spoiler free! You will learn everything by just playing. Also, it has a very good story! :'(