Best way to set up enemies that player follow?

[Sakurra]

I've been looking up enemies that follow the player and then upon event touch a battle starts. But that means every enemy sprite makes a B-line to the player. Is there a way to modify this without including script, plugin or parallel process?

I don't mind parallel process actually, I do like using them. But I 've heard too many can cause lag. (If anyone can explain how to use many parallel and prevent lag, I'm all ears)

I currently have a switch that flips on and attracts them to the player. But I only want them to go after the player if the player is nearby. Any suggestions please?

Edit1: Here's an idea. When the switch is on, can the enemies run parallel to go toward the player? But maybe a condition running with coordinates somehow so they don't all go after the player. But what if there is like 25 enemies on the map. Is that a good idea or bad? Is there even a limit for enemies that run parallel that go after the player?

 

[Milennin]

My preferred method is to designate an area for each monster in which they roam freely. The borders of the area are made of touch event that turn on the chase switch for the monster in that area when the player enters it, and turns it off once they leave it. It also stops that monster from leaving its area.
Going by coordinates and enabling chase when they come within certain range of the player is also do-able, but I don't like having to keep a parallel event running checking for coordinates at all times, not to mention it can cause monsters to roam in places where you might not want them to go.

 

[Rugman]

May I ask why you prefer not to use plugins or scripts? It just feels like your missing out on so much of what mv can do. Yanfly’s event chase plugin for instance would allow you to do more than you ever could with just eventing.

 

[Andar]

not really - because pathfinding is difficult to event, and you would need a variant of it to do this.

If you are willing to add at minimum a pathfinding plugin to give functions for this it would be doable, but extremely difficult without.
I'm not a fan of the excessive plugin use either, but in some cases plugins are the way to go. Being against their use in all cases is as bad as jumping to plugins at first sign of difficulty or laziness.

 

[slimmmeiske2]

Closing at OP's request.