You are making an obsession about respawn, I don't like it either, but you make such a big deal with that. It's hard to forget how important you feel it is in MEA despite they can be skipped, that's lacking sense of proportion and context, and just reacting on a feature but not how it is in the context. It's like the feature makes you lost all analysis ability.
Yes, it's true, I've lowered my final score on ME4 because of trashmob respawns by 1. Would go 9 otherwise. Imagine that.
Prey uses endless trashmob respawns for several reasons.
1. Not enough original and unique content, insert filler to make Dragonball Z 7563785867385653 episodes instead of 90% less.
2. Mainstream wants jack of all trades master of everything character. Some said you won't be able to do that in Prey. Earlygame it does seem so. Later you discover that by grinding on trashmobs you can make "praxis kits" yourself. The exotic material needed comes only from trashmobs.
3. Remember TW3 endless respawns in wilderness? What were those? Wolves and whatnot 1hit to kill crap. Well, that worked for me, nothing is empty yet I'm not wasting my time on mundane idiocies. In Prey, you're spammed with jesus christ I need to empty 10 shotgun cells into a "phantom version x" trashmob to kill it. A trashmob that respawns over and over. Everywhere. No, you don't have tons of bullets and once you've used explosive tanks they don't respawn! Turrets? Yea, you don't have endless amount of spare parts to fix them once broken. Etc etc, aka resources are finite, trashmobs are infinite.
For many years already I'm saying the technology we're playing games on allows "remembering" state of every object in a game. When Gothic 1 appeared with it's system of repopulating the world with harder trashmobs that can't revive I thought this is it, garbage designs are a thing from the past. But no. Some developers' mindset is stuck with no space to save gamestate android phones. Did you notice I don't cry much when gridner making studios close their doors?
This game is not Arkane, it's Bethesda. Without norespawn mod, I don't think I'd ever finish their Skyrim and FO4. Sadly, this is another engine and I'm not hoping much for a norespawn mod here.
So what have we here. A game with superinteresting story with twists and mystery you want to uncover. Arkane specific graphics style some hate, for some reason I adore.
But you're playing a cleaner in a junkyard that cannot be cleaned till doomsday. If I wanted to be french maid, I would work on that job, I wouldn't play games.
A potential masterpiece with a turd at a center of it, a turd some say is important and are preaching whatever excuses for it. To them it probably is, they're training everyday with it I guess. To me it's still turd in a shiny wrapping.
Additional info only for those who are irritated with grinding and don't praise it.
The game has a nasty bug where past loadscreens some of your weapons can disappear:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/480490/discussions/0/1327844097120169163/
Ignorable issue if trashmobs didn't respawn so you need to kill them again! This minireview from a person who completely missed crafting, actually nails it:
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198343710616/recommended/480490/
Great start to the game you have a lot of supplies. Then torwards the end you Literally have nothing but a wrench and 20 hp running back and forth struggling to survive picking up every little piece of junk u find but, no ammo, med kits or anything that will help you get to the end faster. its jus you and the wrench running away the whole time.
Don't think you can overcome this by making plenty of manual saves. You're allowed to make 20 savegames max. See… You're playing the game on a phone. "What's a terabyte?" asked Arkane developers.