I have found this to be true but only in limited scenarios.
Prospective players are sometimes worried about 100+ days because long time server goers can sometimes be WAY specced and have an amazing amount of loot, which puts some of them at an advantage in terms of PVP, but also means that:
a. Most of the world is already looted and waiting on a respawn cycle. This is generally not a desirable thing and hinders early game survival.
b. The map has been turned into a blighted hellscape of failed and/or destroyed bases, overmined (with cave ins), badly placed traps, and generally looks like about as trashy as you'd expect a college fratboi bachelor pad to look.
But, this is a correctable problem by providing intermittent map implementation, loot cycle restarts, and even some good old fashioned communication.
I have to admit the number one reason I won't play on public PVE servers OF ANY KIND is because of overmodding in ways that are unpredictable, or even worse are dead Discord panels where randos end up informing me that 'the admins are on vacation, etc', and the only members of said servers are basically people who discovered it that day and may never play again.