I agree with Mr.Snackbar on most of his post. The only thing I am against is the trader zone thing. If players could shoot out they would camp the zone and thus make it pointless... As to what to do about it, I would say either turn off the god mode for players and ai or simply make the zone smaller so it is just the building that is in it.
Alan has a great point about the new players. last weekend at the peek times there were 29 people on the server. alot of these has not been back because the loot rate is so low taht you have to stand around for a long time and wait for a spawn.(also none of the CUP, RHS, or the HLC weapons are in the loot list) The long loot wait makes it almost pointless to try and do loot runs. As of right now the only way to stay afloat on the server is to hunt vehicles. Forced vehicle hunting is caused by the long loot time and lack of items in the loot list, and by the fact that the missions are to easy.
I will explain my point on the missions. They have at most eight enemy ai at them.(just the red, green and yellow missions) The free gas up north by the salt flats has a broken loot crate.(the crate spawns under one of the buildings. Which causes it to be destroyed every time the mission is cleared) In the loot crates from the red, green, and yellow missions there is only a few guns and a little food. your max payout for one mission is only around 3k. This number is including all the gear off the ai. Where as you can make 40k off one vehicle. If the missions were a little harder(more ai, around 12-15 for the red, 8-10 yellow and 6 for the green) and they payed a little better players would see them as a viable option to vehicle hunting.
The underwater missions. As a whole i don't think anyone in the community has actually completed one of these missions. They are either to glitched(boats on the land or under the water, and the ai inside of the rocks) or the water is to thick and murky to see in even with diving goggles. In their current state the underwater missions are just using up server resources which could be used to run more of the other missions at one time if the underwater ones were not running.
None if what I have said here is meant as a complaint. I am just trying to make suggestions in a friendly and helpful way. These are meant to improve there server and draw new players. It is all well and good to have access to cool tanks and such but if you have to roll around in a 175,000 pop tab tank all the time because you are constantly being destroyed then the server might be at a point where the newer players are getting pounded the whole time they are logged in because they are in SUVs and such. This is causing a lot of them to rage quit. Those of us that have the equipment to take out the bigger enemies(bobcats, BMP-3, panthers, and the marshals) can do well but these new people have no defense. You can say in response that they should get a rocket launcher. However, they would then have to see the enemy vehicle first and have time to respond. Most of the time that is not going to happen, not to mention most of the time new players can't afford a launcher. The extreme direction the server is headed reminds me of BIGSL and that is not good because his servers where and still are meat grinders and no one wants to play on them. I think the management team here at Old Guys needs to strive to achieve a balance between the difficultly and the cool toys. As a general rule with pve servers you get players in with a large variety of weapons and vehicles and you keep them coming back by having a challenge and a great community. Perhaps think about removing some of the heli crashes in favor of the mission system.
If the loot and loot rate where adjusted and the missions tweaked and increased(more than 3 on the map), the underwater missions scraped in favor of the land based ones in higher quantity. There would be more opportunity for new players to grow and prosper.
A product can not be improved without feedback. I hope that my feedback has been insightful and helps with some of your decisions for the future of Old Guys Gaming PVE. Please keep up the great work. You are all busy especially you Jason and I know a lot of these suggestions would be up to you to look into. That being said I personally thank each and every one of you guys on the management team of OGG. The server you run is a great place to join and be with friends and just have fun. What a great community that is being fostered here!! Way to go and keep it up fellas.
Here are a few other things
http://www.exilemod.com/topic/8853-leader-board-for-your-website/ This is a leader board for the webpage.
http://www.exilemod.com/topic/6814-scratchies-v06-a-lottery-like-game-used-in-exile-mod-v094-xm8/ A fun little Scratch off game.
http://www.exilemod.com/topic/7026-increase-loot-spawn-speed/
http://www.exilemod.com/topic/670-starting-items/ This should help to make it so players spawn with a pistol or whatever. You might have to remove the water bottle you start with because the orange suit doesn't have room for the mags, gun and the bottle. That might be why we got mags before but no gun.
Or try this
http://www.exilemod.com/topic/6132-spawn-items/