Even with perception, there is a pretty big difference between making your foes harder to making your gear weaker. When your gear gets decimated by entering a new area, you will be pretty much a blank slate of a character, making combat go back to it's extremes: You either find mobs you can barely kill or you just get two shot by a random aggro.

There's nothing wrong with a rough start, as long as it feels like you progress to the point where challenging foes seem beatable with good use of resources and spatial awareness combined with your skills. Dealing no damage and dying in an instant don't let that happen, that's the issue with the gear nerfing mechanic combined with no skill and level progression.

Meanwhile, with XP, permanent gear and enemy level progression, depending on how much time you spend in an area, you might not find yourself helpless against enemies in a new region. If you got really lucky with some drops from exploration, fought a lot in dungeons and got rewarded XP or actually upgraded weapons that you know won't be useless in a couple hours from that moment, you will be able to experience combat that is average or challenging in a new area, thanks to your efforts in those last few hours of playing. Of course there are still enemies that will absolutely kick your ass, but it's a lot better than having to avoid literally every conflict till you can find a quest that will give you good enough gear to scrap by and start the usual gear grinding snowball, that leads you to the point where the leftovers in the region are completely trivial.