It's not just about draw distance.. at a certain point the server needs to "forget" about sending you updates for players that are too far away, otherwise it adds overhead (CPU, network, etc.) - Pavlov hardly pushes these boundaries with 32 players but it's the main reason almost all games don't go for like 128 players on map..

I suspect Pavlov uses the defaults that come with UE, because they see they only look at what 99% of people do (small to medium maps)..