I am living in small group consists of 3 members and I find it difficult to set the PvE goal after we can hunt bears by group or by snekkja-hunting.
Mammoth, Trolls and Whales are too rare and too strong and these combat goals are too far that group members give up to grow their stats and eventually quit, make things more difficult for members left behind. I guess this kind of spiral also happens for other small groups.
My ideas are
(1) New creatures (between bear and trolls) or dungeon(between ants and beavers) for 3~4 ppl hunting
(2) Make them much more common than mammoth or beaver dungeons.
(3) Make them not deadly(executing) so that small groups with no disposable combat alts can know their growing progress by try and error.
It is okay if they will make nasty wounds that requires several types of medicines and several days to heal.
I understand perma-death is an important feature of this game, but make strong PvE enemy deadly actually forces us to go on 100% win tactics or combat alts zombie attacks. Enabling fair fights for small group members can encourage them to grow strong and probably extend the life span, because the game features are finally result in stronger combat so if we lose motivation in getting strong, we'll eventually quit.