Ideas to Improve the Server Wanted :)

Hey guys. It has been a long time since the last server wipe (November~) and while we have a lot of big tribes, there isn't a lot of PVP action or raiding going on. I've been throwing some ideas around with Kiety and Oldmate and I wanted to ask for your feedback too:

What do you think would make the server more fun to play on?

When the server started we had a no explosive rule to allow people to get established and on their feet without fear of being wiped the first time they logged off. But now most tribes are into auto-turrets and gigas that rule seems less necessary and more of a hinderance. I was wondering what you would think of changing the rules up so that explosives and offline raiding are allowed, but to prevent total mayhem we install a mod like Offline Raid Protection so that raiding people who are offline takes significantly more resource.

You can check out the Offline Raid Protection mod here:
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=600705968

What do you think of that idea? Do you have other ideas for the server?

Another idea is to make the server a giga-free-zone (and kill the tamed gigas) -OR- to limit the number of gigas per tribe to say 1 or 2.

Or we could transition from PVP and make it a PVE server with the facility for tribes to declare war on each other when and if they wanted to?

The server isn't being used very much lately and it is taking time to update/maintain/etc. I want to keep it running if there are lots of people using it, but if people have moved on to other servers or other games then it might be time to call it quits. I'll be renewing for another month when it comes due around the 24th~ of the month, and making some changes (like allowing explosives or whatever comes of this discussion) but if we aren't seeing much use in the first half of April then the server will likely close down 24th~ April when the renewal would have been due.

If the server were to be shut down you won't need to lose your base or your dinos! There will be PLENTY of warning before anything like that happens so dinos you wish to keep can be uploaded to an Obelisk. I will also make the server save files available to anyone who wants them. With a little bit of copy/pasting magic that means you can restore the island, the dinosaurs and your base into Single Player mode. Or if someone approached me and wanted to both pay for the ongoing hosting and take responsibility for the updating of mods and stuff then I would be very happy to migrate it onto a host of their choice, or transfer the current server hosting into their name (it is $75/month).

Anyways - first priority is to tweak the server so that we can bring back some fun game play and that is what I hope will happen. I'm only talking about the other stuff so that you know what I am thinking and can plan accordingly.

Please leave a comment with your ideas for how more life can be breathed into the server and once we have some ideas we can make some changes. Equally importantly, if you have limits or ideas for things that you would HATE then post those too so we can find a happy medium.