As far as I remember they've been in the game since the very start. Even in Patch 7 you had them.
Though yeah so far it's just a niche feature used for maybe one or two quests. Ferzerk in Blighted Village is supposed to be knocked out in order for Wyll to have a conversation with him. But otherwise knocking out NPCs basically deletes them from the game and treats them as dead.
Considering this is the final Early Access update and nothing was ever mentioned about the feature from the development side, it is most likely going to get scrapped completely or they might surprise us in a pleasant way on release and make it really cool. They did say that they are intentionally withholding a lot of stuff and a lot of the things in the latest trailer are actually not available to us right now, so might or might not be in the final release done properly. We'll know on release, but considering they cut out the fishermen from the game also makes me think it might just get scrapped.
I agree wholeheartedly though, it needs addressing one way or another.
Mind you, with all that said, things like this are what make me worry that August 2023 isn't our release date, its just the day we get to start game testing acts 2 and 3.
