What MO and any other MMO really needs is mana and stamina management systems for NPCs, so they don't just have infinite of it. Basically NPCs that adhere to the same rules as players.
its not like this is a new concept... even eq had it back in the day for mana so when they ran out they would stop casting and switch to melee or you could burn their mana and make it happen faster. Stamina is a trickier one since enemies should remain dangerous.
in MO1 i think they got slower as they were more heavily damaged so you could run away and kite any melee mob at that point, but even that has its downside as the enemy is essentially trivialized if you get them to slow down even a little bit.
there's a lot of things sv needs to consider with how they want their NPCs to behave. do they move full speed in water? if not is it acceptable strategy to lure enemies to water and pelt them down from shore? what should npcs do if they cant reach their target due to pathing 'abuse'? right now they just sit there like an idiot waiting to die. is that really how we want the npcs in game to behave? theres any number of solutions that other MMOs have implemented (go invulnerable, have infinite hp regen, warp back to spawn point, summon you to them, etc) but sitting and waiting to die is likely not the best solution.
i dont think there should be any issue with npcs having mana as a resource, stamina is tricky since you could potentially abuse pathing to run them out of stamina and trivialize the fight. in sarducaa it was mounted archer heaven and i dont think npcs should have no recourse vs a mounted archer. SV needs to take a hard look at how they want NPCs to function and if such tactics should be allowed, and if not, how to prevent such abuse.
-barcode