Ok so you don’t like survival games and thats ok but saying that doing what is a standard part of a genre is a dick move (using the environment to your advantage in a SURVIVAL GAME) is ridiculous, and yes its clear that the devs have decided thats the way it will be for now but i would encourage them to move back into the survival aspects again however they can. If tethering is required for ai performance then make it less limited in its range so it acts more aggressive, if too many npcs attacking at once is causing lag than decrease spawns and increase their health and damage etc. Randomize some spawns of animals so it ferls less like a early 2000s mmo and more like a living world, Don’t make a game world that feels far to artificial even more so.