I’ve been playing eve for 10 years and for most of that I’ve been doing FW.
Novice plexes should disallow faction ships. At the very least they should disallow pirate ships. There is nothing to be learned by a noob from fighting a faction ship that is better in every way. The only thing to learn is to not take the fight.
FW is dead-ish. There are not constant fleets. And whilst people may hand out the occasional freebies, people are not interested in helping noobs where it counts: helping them get their own kills.