I think the collect gold option disabled is great.
Some of us have a bit too much gold in reserve since the winter event still... I'm happy we don't see someone come to the server with 100'000 gold from that broken event. Right now at least, if someone uses 100'000 gold, he is paying for my free2play all year long.
I agree with you, but for a competition of this stature you must have parity with guns.
Just to give you an idea, on one of the Allstars Qualification servers, one of the players, with approximately 9 hours of play, is already at the top, with his station developed at the maximum limit.
The question is: can victory be bought?