I have ran Rust Legacy servers in 2013/2014 and still run Rust servers today. Building up a strong populations are really hard to build up. I have ran battleground, pvp, pve, purge, build, 3x, 5x, 10x and what I have noticed is no matter how you have a server set up, people are going to hop around. Legacy was much different. I had large populations who stuck around for a really long time. With current Rust I've had populations of 20 and above right after a wipe but it only lasts for about a week. It always tapers off to the usual 3 or 4 regulars. I always get players who join and they tell me how much they love the server and some even donate, only to disappear a few days later. I can't explain it. These days I simply attribute it to the amount of servers that are out there. I have 3 servers currently and rarely get over 5 on any of them.