my thought on this are pretty clear
-Flawed mods are a cool stepping stone, and it's cool to fit one into a cheap build because it's more efficient than a regular version.
Don't want new players to stick too much endo in them (even if it's a nonissue)? just make them cheaper to upgrade.
-Giving the normal version of early weapons to players means they will have to get and level a worse version of their starting weapon as part of normal progression.
This is just bad design.
-New players don't have anything to do in open worlds before getting the kiddo
really, they don't, i get wanting to show off the game for wow factor, but this won't work, they'll just have a bad time and useless ressources.