No can join a full pixel lobby, and no one wants to join a nearly empty one either. So, you end up with a full lobby, one or two with 1-4 players, and a whole list of empty ones. The solution to this is for there to be more incentive to join empty or low population lobbies.
My suggestion is this: make it so empty lobbies passively generate salt chests, and show the number of chests in a lobby on the server browser. The longer a lobby is empty, the more chests it generates. However, INCREASE the time it takes to open a chest to 30 seconds for any lobby that has less than 5 players. This will make it a slog to just farm empty lobbies for salt chests. It should always be faster to just solo the salt mines. Of course, the rate at which salt chests spawn should also be increased for low population lobbies. There should be a balance between salt earnings between full and empty lobbies, making it more likely for empty lobbies to be joined.
My suggestion is this: make it so empty lobbies passively generate salt chests, and show the number of chests in a lobby on the server browser. The longer a lobby is empty, the more chests it generates. However, INCREASE the time it takes to open a chest to 30 seconds for any lobby that has less than 5 players. This will make it a slog to just farm empty lobbies for salt chests. It should always be faster to just solo the salt mines. Of course, the rate at which salt chests spawn should also be increased for low population lobbies. There should be a balance between salt earnings between full and empty lobbies, making it more likely for empty lobbies to be joined.