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As a person whom habitually plays MP servers also with a large group of friends, there's a lot to know about things:

The first being, playing with this many people for long periods of time, if you're at vanilla settings or lower is going to launch you through the bulk of the content of this game.  You can always go backwards in alphas as people have suggested, and that is a viable path to go.  However, should you and your group wish to move forward - These are some things to know about how not to make that a speed leveling solution.

1.  You'll definitely want to turn up the difficulty.  Warrior and Survivalist are a wee bit difficult in the beginning, but it promotes group tactics.  Everyone should be relying upon each other anyway, for the most part.  Making zombies tougher is a great way to promote your group as a pack.

2.  Trimming down your XP setting is also sorta vital.   My group plays at less than vanilla (not sure what the precise number is) it prolongs the game by quite a bit because you can't just make the decision to go off all cowboy and farm XP whenever you get infestation quests chained back to back.

3.  Tone down the loot percentage:  It's really hard to stay hungry for content if everyone chains trader quests for max XP gain.  There is some nuance to this feature.  It might seem dumb at first, but if your group is good at its cohesion, then what loot does come around will likely go to the people that actually need it.

4.  If the traders are really the root of the problem, stay away from questing.   It will remain vital that they are around for the purposes of trading, but will continue to grant access to Water Filters for Dew Collection.  By extension, Duct tape and steel production is one of 7 Days most notable resource mid to end game choke points challenges.  How you handle that is going to be the most telling aspect of how your group begins to get bored with the game.

5.  Turn up your airdrop events.  While making things more difficult in other areas, this particular feature will bring value back to airdrops.  My own group doesn't really care about air drops at all, but I wont let that speak for everyone.

6.  Toggle your loot refresh in POI's.   Why?  Because it will either force you to go one of two routes depending on what you think will be more fun in regards to map size.  The first route is to refresh things quickly.  This will somewhat mitigate the notion of loosing out on double looting the same POI because of trader quests.  Refreshing POI loot faster will help sustain a group that may desire to grow roots on small maps.  The other route requires extending the loot refresh beyond normal, which forces a group to be nomadic.  So once a town is completely looted, you and your group have no choice but to move on entirely until the next however long it takes.   Turning off loot respawn entirely is an even more nuanced approach, because it also contributes to the decay of a any given map's life cycle.

7.  Try out frequent or random horde nights that come with no warning.  Wanna see people focus more about the unknown potential issues?  This setting does precisely that!  Maintaining paranoia is something I have found essential to keeping groups tight.

8. And finally, this is the most important thing to look out for with MP groups:  Once people start feeling completely and utterly safe, people start to loose interest.  It is the biggest turning point, because you'll see people start to be less and less focused upon helping each other - and more about personal pursuits, and/or build hybridization.  It may not be a slippery slope, but it is a slope.

Hope this helps.  My group and I still play together (2 nights a week for up to 4 hours per night) and we are often level 80 ish/day 32 before we consider turning the difficulty up even higher or changing maps.   But, we all seem to agree that the most fun is the early levels when the game is really about the resource crunch.  We've been doing this since A18, and it's absolutely vital to learn how your toggles offer different forms of entertainment.   One of the guys in my group is the server admin and he keeps most of the map gen details to himself, which keeps us always asking ourselves what will become important at any given play through.   I hear a lot of people complain about how the base game works, but in every single thread - all of them were really flippant about looking deeper at how they approach the game itself.  The one thing that can keep a game fresh is really about MINDSET.  Focusing on group logistics can be really rewarding, and if everyone feels like they aren't being challenged, then you might as well hang it up and call it a win.   In other words, straddling the edge of failure is essential.  It's what makes games like this so compelling!

As a person whom habitually plays MP servers also with a large group of friends, there's a lot to know about things:

The first being, playing with this many people for long periods of time, if you're at vanilla settings or lower is going to launch you through the bulk of the content of this game.  You can always go backwards in alphas as people have suggested, and that is a viable path to go.  However, should you and your group wish to move forward - These are some things to know about how not to make that a speed leveling solution.

1.  You'll definitely want to turn up the difficulty.  Warrior and Survivalist are a wee bit difficult in the beginning, but it promotes group tactics.  Everyone should be relying upon each other anyway, for the most part.  Making zombies tougher is a great way to promote your group as a pack.

2.  Trimming down your XP setting is also sorta vital.   My group plays at less than vanilla (not sure what the precise number is) it prolongs the game by quite a bit because you can't just make the decision to go off all cowboy and farm XP whenever you get infestation quests chained back to back.

3.  Tone down the loot percentage:  It's really hard to stay hungry for content if everyone chains trader quests for max XP gain.  There is some nuance to this feature.  It might seem dumb at first, but if your group is good at its cohesion, then what loot does come around will likely go to the people that actually need it.

4.  If the traders are really the root of the problem, stay away from questing.   It will remain vital that they are around for the purposes of trading, but will continue to grant access to Water Filters for Dew Collection.  By extension, Duct tape and steel production is one of 7 Days most notable resource mid to end game choke points challenges.  How you handle that is going to be the most telling aspect of how your group begins to get bored with the game.

5.  Turn up your airdrop events.  While making things more difficult in other areas, this particular feature will bring value back to airdrops.  My own group doesn't really care about air drops at all, but I wont let that speak for everyone.

6.  Toggle your loot refresh in POI's.   Why?  Because it will either force you to go one of two routes depending on what you think will be more fun in regards to map size.  The first route is to refresh things quickly.  This will somewhat mitigate the notion of loosing out on double looting the same POI because of trader quests.  Refreshing POI loot faster will help sustain a group that will grow roots on a small map.  The other route requires extending the loot refresh beyond normal, which forces a group to be nomadic.  So once a town is completely looted, you and your group have no choice but to move on entirely until the next however long it takes.   Turning off loot respawn entirely is an even more nuanced approach, because it also contributes to the decay of a any given map's life cycle.

7.  Try out frequent or random horde nights that come with no warning.  Wanna see people focus more about the unknown potential issues?  This setting does precisely that!  Maintaining paranoia is something I have found essential to keeping groups tight.

8. And finally, this is the most important thing to look out for with MP groups:  Once people start feeling completely and utterly safe, people start to loose interest.  It is the biggest turning point, because you'll see people start to be less and less focused upon helping each other - and more about personal pursuits, and/or build hybridization.  It may not be a slippery slope, but it is a slope.

Hope this helps.  My group and I still play together (2 nights a week for up to 4 hours per night) and we are often level 80 ish/day 32 before we consider turning the difficulty up even higher or changing maps.   But, we all seem to agree that the most fun is the early levels when the game is really about the resource crunch.  We've been doing this since A18, and it's absolutely vital to learn how your toggles offer different forms of entertainment.   One of the guys in my group is the server admin and he keeps most of the map gen details to himself, which keeps us always asking ourselves what will become important at any given play through.   I hear a lot of people complain about how the base game works, but in every single thread - all of them were really flippant about looking deeper at how they approach the game itself.  The one thing that can keep a game fresh is really about MINDSET.  Focusing on group logistics can be really rewarding, and if everyone feels like they aren't being challenged, then you might as well hang it up and call it a win.   In other words, straddling the edge of failure is essential.  It's what makes games like this so compelling!

As a person whom habitually plays MP servers also with a large group of friends, there's a lot to know about things:

The first being, playing with this many people for long periods of time, if you're at vanilla settings or lower is going to launch you through the bulk of the content of this game.  You can always go backwards in alphas as people have suggested, and that is a viable path to go.  However, should you and your group wish to move forward - These are some things to know about how not to make that a speed leveling solution.

1.  You'll definitely want to turn up the difficulty.  Warrior and Survivalist are a wee bit difficult in the beginning, but it promotes group tactics.  Everyone should be relying upon each other anyway, for the most part.  Making zombies tougher is a great way to promote your group as a pack.

2.  Trimming down your XP setting is also sorta vital.   My group plays at less than vanilla (not sure what the precise number is) it prolongs the game by quite a bit because you can't just make the decision to go off all cowboy and farm XP whenever you get infestation quests chained back to back.

3.  Tone down the loot percentage:  It's really hard to stay hungry for content if everyone chains trader quests for max XP gain.  There is some nuance to this as well.  It might seem dumb at first, but if your group is good at its cohesion, then what loot does come around, will likely go to the people that actually need it, instead of over-homogenizing everyone in the squad.

4.  If the traders are really the root of the problem, stay away from questing.   It will remain vital that they are around for trading only, but also access to Water Filters for Dew Collection.  By extension, Duct tape and steel production is one of 7 Days most notable resource mid to end game choke points.  How you handle that is going to be the most telling aspect of how your group begins to get bored with the game.

5.  Turn up your airdrop events.  While making things more difficult in other areas, this particular feature will bring value back to airdrops.

6.  Toggle your loot refresh in POI's.   Why?  Because it will either force you to go one of two routes depending on what you think will be more fun in regards to map size.  The first route is to refresh things quickly.  This will somewhat mitigate the notion of loosing out on double looting the same POI because of trader quests.  Refreshing POI loot faster will help sustain a group that will grow roots on a small map.  The other route requires extending the loot refresh beyond normal, which forces a group to be nomadic.  So once a town is completely looted, you and your group have no choice but to move on entirely until the next however long it takes.   Turning off loot respawn entirely is an even more nuanced approach, because it also contributes to the decay of a any given map's life cycle.

7.  Try out frequent or random horde nights that come with no warning.  Wanna see people focus more about the unknown potential issues?  This setting does precisely that!  Maintaining paranoia is something I have found essential to keeping groups tight.

8. And finally, this is the most important thing to look out for with MP groups:  Once people start feeling completely and utterly safe, people start to loose interest.  It is the biggest turning point, because you'll see people start to be less and less focused upon helping each other - and more about personal pursuits, and/or build hybridization.  It may not be a slippery slope, but it is a slope.

Hope this helps.  My group and I still play together (2 nights a week for up to 4 hours per night) and we are often level 80 ish/day 32 before we consider turning the difficulty up even higher or changing maps.   But, we all seem to agree that the most fun is the early levels when the game is really about the resource crunch.  We've been doing this since A18, and it's absolutely vital to learn how your toggles offer different forms of entertainment.   One of the guys in my group is the server admin and he keeps most of the map gen details to himself, which keeps us always asking ourselves what will become important at any given play through.   I hear a lot of people complain about how the base game works, but in every single thread - all of them were really flippant about looking deeper at how they approach the game itself.  The one thing that can keep a game fresh is really about MINDSET.  Focusing on group logistics can be really rewarding, and if everyone feels like they aren't being challenged, then you might as well hang it up and call it a win.   In other words, straddling the edge of failure is essential.  It's what makes games like this so compelling!

As a person whom habitually plays MP servers also with a large group of friends, there's a lot to know about things:

The first being, playing with this many people for long periods of time, if you're at vanilla settings or lower is going to launch you through the bulk of the content of this game.  You can always go backwards in alphas as people have suggested, and that is a viable path to go.  However, should you and your group wish to move forward,

there are some things to know about how not to make that a speed leveling solution.

1.  You'll definitely want to turn up the difficulty.  Warrior and Survivalist are a wee bit difficult in the beginning, but it promotes group tactics.  Everyone should be relying upon each other anyway, for the most part.  Making zombies tougher is a great way to promote your group as a pack.

2.  Trimming down your XP setting is also sorta vital.   My group plays at less than vanilla (not sure what the precise number is) it prolongs the game by quite a bit because you can't just make the decision to go off all cowboy and farm XP whenever you get infestation quests chained back to back.

3.  Tone down the loot percentage:  It's really hard to stay hungry for content if everyone chains trader quests for max XP gain.  There is some nuance to this as well.  It might seem dumb at first, but if your group is good at its cohesion, then what loot does come around, will likely go to the people that actually need it, instead of over-homogenizing everyone in the squad.

4.  If the traders are really the root of the problem, stay away from questing.   It will remain vital that they are around for trading only, but also access to Water Filters for Dew Collection.  By extension, Duct tape and steel production is one of 7 Days most notable resource mid to end game choke points.  How you handle that is going to be the most telling aspect of how your group begins to get bored with the game.

5.  Turn up your airdrop events.  While making things more difficult in other areas, it will bring value back to airdrops.

6.  Toggle your loot refresh in POI's.   Why?  Because it will either force you to go one of two routes depending on what you think will be more fun in regards to map size.  The first route is to refresh things quickly.  This will somewhat mitigate the notion of loosing out on double looting the same POI because of trader quests.  Refreshing POI loot faster will help sustain a group that will grow roots on a small map.  The other route requires extending the loot refresh beyond normal, which forces a group to be nomadic.  So once a town is completely looted, you and your group have no choice but to move on entirely until the next however long it takes.   Turning off loot respawn entirely is an even more nuanced approach, because it also contributes to the decay of a any given map's life cycle.

7.  Try out frequent or random horde nights that come with no warning.  Wanna see people focus more about the unknown potential issues?  This setting does precisely that!  Maintaining paranoia is something I have found essential to keeping groups tight.

8. And finally, this is the most important thing to look out for with MP groups:  Once people start feeling completely and utterly safe, people start to loose interest.  It is the biggest turning point, because you'll see people start to be less and less focused upon helping each other - and more about personal pursuits, and/or build hybridization.  It may not be a slippery slope, but it is a slope.

Hope this helps.  My group and I still play together (2 nights a week for up to 4 hours per night) and we are often level 80 ish/day 32 before we consider turning the difficulty up even higher or changing maps.   But, we all seem to agree that the most fun is the early levels when the game is really about the resource crunch.  We've been doing this since A18, and it's absolutely vital to learn how your toggles offer different forms of entertainment.   One of the guys in my group is the server admin and he keeps most of the map gen details to himself, which keeps us always asking ourselves what will become important at any given play through.   I hear a lot of people complain about how the base game works, but in every single thread - all of them were really flippant about looking deeper at how they approach the game itself.  The one thing that can keep a game fresh is really about MINDSET.  Focusing on group logistics can be really rewarding, and if everyone feels like they aren't being challenged, then you might as well hang it up and call it a win.   In other words, straddling the edge of failure is essential.  It's what makes games like this so compelling!

As a person whom habitually plays MP servers also with a large group of friends, there's a lot to know about things:

The first being, playing with this many people for long periods of time, if you're at vanilla settings or lower is going to launch you through the bulk of the content of this game.  You can always go backwards in alphas as people have suggested, and that is a viable path to go.  However, should you and your group wish to move forward,

there are some things to know about how not to make that a speed leveling solution.

1.  You'll definitely want to turn up the difficulty.  Warrior and Survivalist are a wee bit difficult in the beginning, but it promotes group tactics.  Everyone should be relying upon each other anyway, for the most part.  Making zombies tougher is a great way to promote your group as a pack.

2.  Trimming down your XP setting is also sorta vital.   My group plays at less than vanilla (not sure what the precise number is) it prolongs the game by quite a bit because you can't just make the decision to go off all cowboy and farm XP whenever you get infestation quests chained back to back.

3.  Tone down the loot percentage:  It's really hard to stay hungry for content if everyone chains trader quests for max XP gain.  There is some nuance to this as well.  It might seem dumb at first, but if your group is good at its cohesion, then what loot does come around, will likely go to the people that actually need it, instead of over-homogenizing everyone in the squad.

4.  If the traders are really the root of the problem, stay away from questing.   It will remain vital that they are around for trading only, but also access to Water Filters for Dew Collection.  By extension, Duct tape and steel production is one of 7 Days most notable resource mid to end game choke points.  How you handle that is going to be the most telling aspect of how your group begins to get bored with the game.

5.  Turn up your airdrop events.  While making things more difficult in other areas, it will bring value back to airdrops.

6.  Toggle your loot refresh in POI's.   Why?  Because it will either force you to go one of two routes depending on what you think will be more fun in regards to map size.  The first route is to refresh things quickly.  This will somewhat mitigate the notion of loosing out on double looting the same POI because of trader quests.  Refreshing POI loot faster will help sustain a group that will grow roots on a small map.  The other route requires extending the loot refresh beyond normal, which forces a group to be nomadic.  So once a town is completely looted, you and your group have no choice but to move on entirely until the next however long it takes.   Turning off loot respawn entirely is an even more nuanced approach, because it also contributes to the decay of a any given map's life cycle.

7.  Try out frequent or random horde nights that come with no warning.  Wanna see people focus more about the unknown potential issues?  This setting does precisely that!  Maintaining paranoia is something I have found essential to keeping groups tight.

8. And finally, this is the most important thing to look out for with MP groups:  Once people start feeling completely and utterly safe, people start to loose interest.  It is the biggest turning point, because you'll see people start to be less and less focused upon helping each other - and more about personal pursuits, and/or build hybridization.  It may not be a slippery slope, but it is a slope.

Hope this helps.  My group and I still play together (2 nights a week for up to 4 hours per night) and we are often level 80 ish/day 32 before we consider turning the difficulty up even higher or changing maps.   But, we all seem to agree that the most fun is the early levels when the game is really about the resource crunch.  We've been doing this since A18, and it's absolutely vital to learn how your toggles offer different forms of entertainment.   One of the guys in my group is the server admin and he keeps most of the map gen details to himself, which keeps us always asking ourselves what will become important at any given play through.   I hear a lot of people complain about how the base game works, abut in every single thread - all of them were really flippant about looking deeper at how they approach the game itself.  The one thing that can keep a game fresh is really about MINDSET.  Focusing on group logistics can be really rewarding, and if everyone feels like they aren't being challenged, then you might as well hang it up and call it a win.   In other words, straddling the edge of failure is essential.  It's what makes games like this so compelling!

As a person whom habitually plays MP servers also with a large group of friends, there's a lot to know about things:

The first being, playing with this many people for long periods of time, if you're at vanilla settings or lower is going to launch you through the bulk of the content of this game.  You can always go backwards in alphas as people have suggested, and that is a viable path to go.  However, should you and your group wish to move forward,

there are some things to know about how not to make that a speed leveling solution.

1.  You'll definitely want to turn up the difficulty.  Warrior and Survivalist are a wee bit difficult in the beginning, but it promotes group tactics.  Everyone should be relying upon each other anyway, for the most part.  Making zombies tougher is a great way to promote your group as a pack.

2.  Trimming down your XP setting is also sorta vital.   My group plays at less than vanilla (not sure what the precise number is) it prolongs the game by quite a bit because you can't just make the decision to go off all cowboy and farm XP whenever you get infestation quests chained back to back.

3.  Tone down the loot percentage:  It's really hard to stay hungry for content if everyone chains trader quests for max XP gain.  There is some nuance to this as well.  It might seem dumb at first, but if your group is good at its cohesion, then what loot does come around, will likely go to the people that actually need it, instead of over-homogenizing everyone in the squad.

4.  If the traders are really the root of the problem, stay away from questing.   It will remain vital that they are around for trading only, but also access to Water Filters for Dew Collection.  By extension, Duct tape and steel production is one of 7 Days most notable resource mid to end game choke points.  How you handle that is going to be the most telling aspect of how your group begins to get bored with the game.

5.  Turn up your airdrop events.  While making things more difficult in other areas, it will bring value back to airdrops.

6.  Toggle your loot refresh in POI's.   Why?  Because it will either force you to go one of two routes depending on what you think will be more fun in regards to map size.  The first route is to refresh things quickly.  This will somewhat mitigate the notion of loosing out on double looting the same POI because of trader quests.  Refreshing POI loot faster will help sustain a group that will grow roots on a small map.  The other route requires extending the loot refresh beyond normal, which forces a group to be nomadic.  So once a town is completely looted, you and your group have no choice but to move on entirely until the next however long it takes.   Turning off loot respawn entirely is an even more nuanced approach, because it also contributes to the decay of a any given map's life cycle.

7.  Try out frequent or random horde nights that come with no warning.  Wanna see people focus more about the unknown potential issues?  This setting does precisely that!  Maintaining paranoia is something I have found essential to keeping groups tight.

8. And finally, this is the most important thing to look out for with MP groups:  Once people start feeling completely and utterly safe, people start to loose interest.  It is the biggest turning point, because you'll see people start to be less and less focused upon helping each other - and more about personal pursuits, and/or build hybridization.  It may not be a slippery slope, but it is a slope.

Hope this helps.  My group and I still play together (2 nights a week for up to 4 hours per night) and we are often level 80 ish/day 32 before we consider turning the difficulty up even higher or changing maps.   But, we all seem to agree that the most fun is the early levels when the game is really about the resource crunch.  We've been doing this since A18, and it's absolutely vital to learn how your toggles offer different forms of entertainment.   One of the guys in my group is the server admin and he keeps most of the map gen details to himself, which keeps us always asking ourselves what will become important at any given play through.   I hear a lot of people complain about how the game works, and in every single circumstance none of them seem to really take responsibility or look deeper in how they approach the game itself.  The one thing that can keep a game fresh is really about MINDSET.  Focusing on group logistics can be really rewarding, and if everyone feels like they aren't being challenged, then you might as well hang it up and call it a win.   In other words, straddling the edge of failure is essential.  It's what makes games like this so compelling!

As a person whom habitually plays MP servers also with a large group of friends, there's a lot to know about things:

The first being, playing with this many people for long periods of time, if you're at vanilla settings or lower is going to launch you through the bulk of the content of this game.  You can always go backwards in alphas as people have suggested, and that is a viable path to go.  However, should you and your group wish to move forward,

there are some things to know about how not to make that a speed leveling solution.

1.  You'll definitely want to turn up the difficulty.  Warrior and Survivalist are a wee bit difficult in the beginning, but it promotes group tactics.  Everyone should be relying upon each other anyway, for the most part.  Making zombies tougher is a great way to promote your group as a pack.

2.  Trimming down your XP setting is also sorta vital.   My group plays at less than vanilla (not sure what the precise number is) it prolongs the game by quite a bit because you can't just make the decision to go off all cowboy and farm XP whenever you get infestation quests chained back to back.

3.  Tone down the loot percentage:  This is probably the best advice.  It's really hard to stay hungry for content if everyone chains trader quests for max XP gain.  Toning down world loot helps, but in a nuanced way.  It might seem dumb at first, but if your group is good at its cohesion, then what loot does come around, will likely go to the people that actually need it, instead of over-homogenizing everyone in the squad.

4.  If the traders are really the root of the problem, stay away from questing.   It will remain vital that they are around for trading only, but also access to Water Filters for Dew Collection.  By extension, Duct tape and steel production is one of 7 Days most notable resource mid-game choke points.  How you handle that is going to be the most telling aspect of how your group begins to get bored with the game.

5.  Turn up your airdrop events.  While making things more difficult in other areas, it will bring value back to airdrops.

6.  Toggle your loot refresh in POI's.   Why?  Because it will either force you to go one of two routes depending on what you think will be more fun in regards to map size.

The first route is to refresh things quickly.  This will mitigate the process of loosing out on double looting the same POI because of trader quests.  Refreshing POI's faster will help a group grow roots on a small map.  The other route requires extending the loot refresh beyond normal, which forces a group to be nomadic.  One of the things I like to keep things a little more spaced out is to remove loot refresh entirely.  So once a town is completely looted, you and your group absolutely has to move on.

7.  Try out frequent or random horde nights that come with no warning.  Wanna see people focus more about the unknown potential issues?  This setting does precisely that!  Maintaining paranoia is something I have found essential to keeping groups tight.

8. And finally, this is the most important thing to look out for with MP groups:  Once people start feeling completely and utterly safe, people start to loose interest.  It is the biggest turning point, because you'll see people start to be less and less focused upon helping each other - and more about personal pursuits, and/or build hybridization.  It may not be a slippery slope, but it is a slope.

Hope this helps.  My group and I still play together (2 nights a week for up to 4 hours per night) and we are often level 80 ish/day 32 before we consider turning the difficulty up even higher or changing maps.   But, we all seem to agree that the most fun is the early levels when the game is really about the resource crunch.  We've been doing this since A18, and it's absolutely vital to learn how your toggles offer different forms of entertainment.   One of the guys in my group is the server admin and he keeps most of the map gen details to himself, which keeps us always asking ourselves what will become important at any given play through.   I hear a lot of people complain about how the game works, and in every single circumstance none of them seem to really take responsibility or look deeper in how they approach the game itself.  The one thing that can keep a game fresh is really about MINDSET.  Focusing on group logistics can be really rewarding, and if everyone feels like they aren't being challenged, then you might as well hang it up and call it a win.   In other words, straddling the edge of failure is essential.  It's what makes games like this so compelling!

As a person whom habitually plays MP servers also with a large group of friends, there's a lot to know about things:

The first being, playing with this many people for long periods of time, if you're at vanilla settings or lower is going to launch you through the bulk of the content of this game.  You can always go backwards in alphas as people have suggested, and that is a viable path to go.  However, should you and your group wish to move forward,

there are some things to know about how not to make that a speed leveling solution.

1.  You'll definitely want to turn up the difficulty.  Warrior and Survivalist are a wee bit difficult in the beginning, but it promotes group tactics.  Everyone should be relying upon each other anyway, for the most part.  Making zombies tougher is a great way to promote your group as a pack.

2.  Trimming down your XP setting is also sorta vital.   My group plays at less than vanilla (not sure what the precise number is) it prolongs the game by quite a bit because you can't just make the decision to go off all cowboy and farm XP whenever you get infestation quests chained back to back.

3.  Tone down the loot percentage:  This is probably the best advice.  It's really hard to stay hungry for content if everyone chains trader quests for max XP gain.  Toning down world loot helps, but in a nuanced way.  It might seem dumb at first, but if your group is good at its cohesion, then what loot does come around, will likely go to the people that actually need it, instead of over-homogenizing everyone in the squad.

4.  If the traders are really the root of the problem, stay away from questing.   It will remain vital that they are around for trading only, but also access to Water Filters for Dew Collection.  By extension, Duct tape and steel production is one of 7 Days most notable resource mid-game choke points.  How you handle that is going to be the most telling aspect of how your group begins to get bored with the game.

5.  Turn up your airdrop events.  While making things more difficult in other areas, it will bring value back to airdrops.

6.  Toggle your loot refresh in POI's.   Why?  Because it will either force you to go one of two routes depending on what you think will be more fun in regards to map size.

The first route is to refresh things quickly.  This will mitigate the process of loosing out on double looting the same POI because of trader quests.  Refreshing POI's faster will help a group grow roots on a small map.  The other route requires extending the loot refresh beyond normal, which forces a group to be nomadic.  One of the things I like to keep things a little more spaced out is to remove loot refresh entirely.  So once a town is completely looted, you and your group absolutely has to move on.

7.  Try out frequent or random horde nights that come with no warning.  Wanna see people focus more about the unknown potential issues?  This setting does precisely that!  Maintaining paranoia is something I have found essential to keeping groups tight.

8. And finally, this is the most important thing to look out for with MP groups:  Once people start feeling completely and utterly safe, people start to loose interest.  It is the biggest turning point, because you'll see people start to be less and less focused upon helping each other - and more about personal pursuits, and/or build hybridization.  It's not a slippery slope, but it is a slope.

Hope this helps.  My group and I still play together (2 nights a week for up to 4 hours per night) and we are often level 80 ish/day 32 before we consider turning the difficulty up even higher or changing maps.   But, we all seem to agree that the most fun is the early levels when the game is really about the resource crunch.  We've been doing this since A18, and it's absolutely vital to learn how your toggles offer different forms of entertainment.   One of the guys in my group is the server admin and he keeps most of the map gen details to himself, which keeps us always asking ourselves what will become important at any given play through.   I hear a lot of people complain about how the game works, and in every single circumstance none of them seem to really take responsibility or look deeper in how they approach the game itself.  The one thing that can keep a game fresh is really about MINDSET.  Focusing on group logistics can be really rewarding, and if everyone feels like they aren't being challenged, then you might as well hang it up and call it a win.   In other words, straddling the edge of failure is essential.  It's what makes games like this so compelling!