This is a topic where I feel Plarium is being intentionally obtuse. It's only balanced if players without mods only face other players without mods. Here's what I wrote on another thread on this topic , slightly edited
Earlier you had new players without mods facing existing players with mods, but they had the option to set up mods incrementally. Now you have new players without mods facing existing players with mods (same as before), but this time WITHOUT the option to set up mods at all.
I'm among the existing players that have the ability to set up mods. I have nothing to gain by your fixing this problem. The fact that I'm rallying against it should indicate how obviously misguided your solution is. The original problem is definitely worth solving for new players, but your solution makes the problem worse.. not better. Surely you can see that.
Is Plarium hoping that new players at some point outnumber the old players so much that statistically new players only face new players? That could take years!
So what is the best solution to the original problem? In this case it's really simple: Just ensure that players without mods only face other players without mods. Then you don't have to wait indefinitely for statistics to work in your favour. That is, if Plarium truly, sincerely wants to solve the original problem, which sadly doesn't appear to be the case.