[Snake]

Reducing the size/range/damage of AoEs won't solve the problem here, just saying. If anything, will bring future nuisances to newer classes, or make certain setups with absurd range more broken than ever.

People spawning close to each other should be a Tactician thing by itself and spawn between player enemies should be more distant or else why bother playing anything but Kensei/VA that insta-gibs someone for 300 damage per hit on Round 0, before the enemy is ready?
Overall, the utility of Round 0 is to prepare your buffs, since you have no other chances to re-cast or re-use them in the rest of the fight without sacrificing Momentum;

And, the way it was before, we had most of the classes with ways to maneuver across the field (Shukuchi, Charge, Western Wind, Gain Air + Winged Serpent, Blink, Haunting, technically all movement skills do cover quite the area), and the new party starting positions wrecked the 'logic' behind a single class that depends a lot on the enemy staying as away as possible (Archer/Arbalest). Hit and Run is a myth for Archers.

I'm quite locked to the idea of making player spawns for PvP fights start by the northern or southern edges of the map, this alone will fix everything.

If anything, Monsters should be the ones spawning in the middle, and players by the borders.