Or go back to the question of how can we get people to join a server with a later game day?
I think the issue with people avoiding late game days will get better as people realize that the game isn't quite as punishing for late joiners as it used to be since TFP introduced the game-stage rules and trader quests (especially since quests reset POIs to the way they were on spawned day 1). Additionally, a server description describing the server's alternative use of "sgs bloodmoonday" could help a bit. I still want a way to schedule bloodmoons to occur on a schedule IRL rather than in-game. This would also require a different way of warning that a bloodmoon is about to occur, such as a status effect similar to a broken leg timer that counts down until the bloodmoon begins, and another that counts down until the bloodmoon ends.
Some people still don't like the idea of joining later than other players, especially in PvP. This is a really difficult problem to solve. Even long-standing games such as MMORPGs have problems with this; people are most excited to play when they are among the first to begin, then subscribers dwindle because joining as a newb while there are many veterans playing at much higher levels is intimidating. The term "gank" actually comes from WoW and originally meant being a high level player engaging PvP with a much lower level player. The solution these games came up with was to make certain areas, most areas in fact, strictly PvE.
Learning from this, what if there were certain areas in 7D2D maps that are flagged for PvP, but outside of these areas the game is always PvE. For example, going into the burnt biome could immediately allow one to engage in PvP with other players in the burnt area. If this were the case, the quality of loot in the burnt area could be increased in order to give players a reason to take the risk that PvP poses. At the same time, new players would be able to get on their feet by simply avoiding the burnt areas. Additionally, a server catering to both PvE and PvP playstyles is more populated, which is something both communities would enjoy. Imagine being someone who only plays the game PvE but still able to play on a server with your friends who play PvP. The PvE players could even team up with and support the PvP players with supplies and bloodmoon solutions.
Low population servers suffer from the intimidation of new players more than high population servers since more players means more new players, so you won't be the lowest level player for long. 7D2D suffers harshly in this department since it's designed specifically for 8 players per server. If further development leads to the default supported server size increasing to something more like 70 (like ARK) then the problem of no one joining after the first few days will dwindle. This would of course require many performance improvements since each player objectively increases server load, so we may be waiting a while for this change.
