There's discussion of this in the update thread but it'll get lost there, so posting this as a split off.
I'm kind of on board with the idea of one shot structures that let someone spawn with you. Just give people who spawn randomly into the wild a 2x2 inventory item that cannot be stolen, dropped, or otherwise moved, like a dream of kinship. There is no other way to acquire this item and it's used to let a friend spawn with you. It makes small groups starting up easier and isn't open to huge levels of exploitation. The only ways to get rid of the dream are to, say, throw it onto your hearthfire to let someone else spawn with you or to select a destroy option, maybe something wistfully named 'forget.' Otherwise it eats up a cumbersome amount of your inventory space but not enough to cripple you as you explore and establish yourself.
This doesn't solve the issue of lots of players trying to spawn with you but I don't think anything fully can besides setting newbies loose in the wild and having them fend for themselves as they make their way to you.
For larger groups maybe just let us spawn with a formal compass item that points us in the direction of our linked friend's hearthfire. So we spawn with a hearth secret and we get a 2x2 sized item that expires over a few days and cannot be looted or moved without simply destroying it. This way we aren't reliant on kind of a silly party system to find one another, because lets be honest it feels very informal at times and requires both players to be on the entire way. This way friends who join can make their way to you at their own pace and establish themselves temporarily and take breaks along the way.