I'd love to see the map condensed into a significantly smaller space. I've probably played for about 5-6 hours and spent most of that time /rtping around trying to find signs of civilization, but all I've found so far was an abandoned igloo. I love working with and engaging other players in-game, but I feel like I'm playing No Man's Sky here
It's fun and all to build alongside others, that is until they claim the land where you were planning to expand to. Also I'm more of a builder/survivalist type, and I don't much care for the constant PVP, raids, trolls, land wars, etc. So I definitely prefer the larger map so I can stay away from other people. If I want to meet/battle others, then I'll utilize the minigames for that.
Eh, I actually met someone today. Their house is like 300 blocks from mine. And I was just RTPing around. DieKasta, I know you're looking for people to kill, but give it up for a bit. Server just started. There's less than 30 bases, as many people are grouped up. I doubt you'd see many people.
Its not just about looking for people to kill. I wanna see signs of life. Without the use of /tpa I'd feel like I was in single player.
While a smaller map could solve this, I think disabling the /rtp and changing spawning could also work. When you first walk through the spawn portal everyone is teleported to a random location rather than setting out on their own from a central spawn location. If you make a central spawn point people will tend to settle near there which I personally enjoy more as you get to see everything that everyone else has worked on. The people that want to be far away still have the option to but it takes more effort than just using /rtp and it brings back the exploratory feel to minecraft.
One approach that I've thought of to keep the 'map' smaller, while still keeping the /rtp command, could be to limit the /rtp command to only teleport people a certain distance from the center of the map. I'm thinking somewhere between 1000-2500 blocks away from the center of the map, rather than getting into the insane numbers of 7000 or upward. That way, people would still spawn decently spread apart should they use that command, but they wouldn't be teleported so far away beyond the reasonable distance to find people.