Only way I can think of to fairly balance the difference for adults with responsibility and people that play 80hrs+ of gaming a week. Plus the game play was very different vrs tek servers, was alot more fun
No tek
No c4,rockets
No weapons past long rifle "nerfed long rifle"
No explosives besides nerfed grenades, have grenades cost more
Extra building hp, no metal
No auto,heavys
Small nerfed soaker saddles since it would be just plant x turrets
No cyros
Keep rates and breeding structures
No custom caves, or building in any caves
Have discarded items stay as long as dead bodys to eliminate Karen popcorning
I miss the days when people would be wandering around with there dinos looking for trouble instead of mainly wyvs and teras. Using your dinos as your mid/late game weapons instead of guns. Not loosing most of your bird tames to several turrets hiding near a drop with no base around just a 1x1. No more, spending 15 minutes of gathering to wipe a base people spent a decent amount of hours to make, or wiping every base without defense in the server.
Primitive servers were more balanced out.
Problem for players that prefer late game is the people that just want to offline and do nothing else are killing the fun some of us use to enjoy.
Game favors offlining players too much, and nobody likes getting offlined most of the time they go to work/sleep