I’ve held my peace on the changes being done to make things less cheesy for the player. Because, in essence, I agree with less cheese. Being able to sit on a rock and plunk something until it dies isn’t a great mechanic.
However, the solution is going to be more of a problem. Previously, you could have emergent moments - even at lower levels - where a Corrupted Shaleback chases you back to your base, and after you’ve gone in, it remains in place. You’d have to call in friends, or set up a general cry for help, involve other players. Or come up with a pit trap to lock it away from you.
You could have patrols of undead in the Unnamed City roaming like some sort of press gang waiting for lowbie players to run through, following them en masse to a particular spot. They would wait for you at the bottom of the pillar you climbed, and you’d be looking at the waning sunlight whilst they wandered below, and while sitting there you’d be praying that a sandstorm doesn’t swirl through.
And don’t forget in the north, you couldn’t just set up camp there as a level 20. Wolves travel in packs, Arisen. And you’d end up inevitably training loads of wolves to your doorstep - I avoided that place until steel, just due to the roving packs of wolves near the Aqueduct.
Even Sepermaru feels less realistic. Want that thrall? Just run in, bludgeon him a few times, run out of the area and everyone “resets” and forgets you were ever there. Except tehir bludgeon bar, so the new meta is going to be run in, hit, run out, repeat until KO’d. Previously, they’d hunt you down, and you could aggro half the city whilst running through trying to Assassin Creed style parkour on all the buildings.
From a game balance design standpoint. I don’t see how every mob in the game being static, not really moving, and walking a short way on a patrol just to teleport back like some sort of Groundhog Day is making the game better, or harder, for the players.
Luring a group of enemies into a kill zone is a legitimate tactic in a video game or even in real life. Especially in a survival game where the AI already has heavy limitations and poor response time. Artificially preventing it feels like the game is cheesing me. It would be totally ridiculous if the players could just walk away from a fight and instantly reset their health. Not cheesing the player is more important than preventing the player from cheesing the game.
If you lose sight of that, then why stop there? Make all bosses deliver one-hit kills, unless the player has a magic amulet. There are easier ways to do it than put in an MMO mechanic which, while good for MMOs, really has no place in a survival game where immersion and emergent gameplay is supposed to be the norm.