I would argue this is where our game philosophies differ. You can’t simply argue “well, most games have this mechanic therefore it must be needed.” You also cannot insult people’s sense of a good video game based on this. Personally, i prefer games that are original, and to be original, one has to choose not to follow commonly used mechanics. Anyway, back to the topic of Iframes:
I agree with you completely that popping isnt really a good mechanic for a permadeath game, and from my time of the forums ive seen a few people also agree on this matter, however, I don’t actually know if Iframes would fix this issue, and if it did, maybe it would fix it to well?
Lets assume we manage to code a perfect Iframe system for rotmg, essentially, the end result is if you get hit by multiple bolts on the same frame (or maybe one or two frames after it as well) you only take one bolt damage, and all other bolts pass through you or something. (essentially, i dont want to argue minor points such as ways players could abuse the system, as im sure you can just code around it).
As I see it, although it would remove popping, it would also remove getting shotgunned from the game, which is a mechanic i like to see (for example, if you sat on a medusa, or ent or ghost god, or even a parylised limon, the Iframe activates and you get hit with pitiful damage compared to what you should recieve). I think i’d rather just see some enemies getting reworked (like ice sphere- which could be re-worked into something that uses the AoE damage system rather than a nigh unavoidable instakill) rather than having Iframes which remove the shotgun mechanic
TL;DR: although I wouldn’t complain if it did make its way into the game, I feel there might be better ways of dealing with “unfair popping”.