If your gonna play, don't play "The Center"

[Mahnogard]

My max default pop is lower, because I have several dinos on the NPC Replacement list without replacing them with anything.

I agree - a hard limit would be nice but I think it would add some more processing to the server due to the way spawns are calculated. Doing it as a percentage allows the multiplier to be applied equally to all spawns. Now, if the server is aware of its max pop, then it could potentially calculate once to get the percentage, apply it and then all would be the same. Same result, but the server does the math. It just seems too simple to work that way in practice. Spawns are a weird and delicately balanced thing in Ark. But it would be sooo much nicer to just say "I only want about 20K dinos. Make it so."

[Mystalias]

Be pretty easy honestly, just program a simple if statement in the spawn controllers. (if totaldinos <= MaxWildDinos, spawn as usual, else, do nothing.)  The variable counting all the creatures is already there, just need to have spawn controllers respect it. If there is a cap variable, just have to expose it. Seems pretty easy to me.

[Igloo]

Yeah the center servers are greifer and hacker central. The gathering rates still arent high enough to support an active pvp environment either, thats why people HATE greifers on official. People work hard for their stuff, and when someone comes along and wrecks it, it's basically like the greifers are destroying the game for those people. When you get wiped by some random jerks after having to work your butt off for hundreds or even thousands of hours, it feels pretty bad (I dont wanna hear the same sorry argument that some people replay over and over like a broken record either,so just shut up). Most people dont even want to play the game at all anymore after something like this happens. Thats why official pvp servers tend to be pretty mellow. 

An active pvp environment only really works if you can get wiped and rebuild after maybe a day or two max (getting wiped doesn't feel so god awful), . On unofficial servers, you can do that, and thats why the pvp on unofficial servers are far, FAR more active than on official.