I am not sure if you have had any experience with Systema? In Systema classes, they don't teach you specific techniques. The teacher starts with some general descriptions and demonstrations of specific types of scenarios, and then the class members pair up and start to play with it. You improvise a response, and see how it works, repeat until you start to get the feel of appropriate responses. Then you swap roles of perp and victim, and and repeat until you both have developed ways of responding that work.
It's a unique training method out of all the martial arts I have trained in, and is extremely effective. I call it 'unlearning' because you aren't being drilled. You are simply 'forgetting' the wrong way to do it.
Working with class members helps you figure out what is more effective. When you make any move, your training partner will respond to it. You get to see what happens. Thank you for your feedback!
If I remember correctly, Spetsnaz (special forces of russia) train 6 months in Systema and though of course they aren't masters after this, they are still highly effective. Systema also spends a lot of time on teaching evasion techniques, rolling on the ground in various ways. The scenario you talk about in this article we did a couple of similar scenarios during the 10 classes I took at Systema. I hope I can continue my training, ideally under Mihail Ryabko or Vladimir Vasiliev.
But yes, having an enthusiastic training partner is very important. It is also important that, though you will start out soft and slow, that you increase speed and force as you get more familiar with the movements, and most important and primary self defense skill is running and evasion. That means a little bit of parcour type stuff, practising jumping off walls to give you a little distance, vaulting fences and climbing taller ones, and , yeah, number 1 important thing is to sense an attacker soon enough before they even get within rock throwing distance. You might walk wide of suspicious people 100 times and 1 time you give yourself the edge that avoids a conflict altogether. An Escrima teacher (philippino stick fighting) who I went to train with we had a first conversation and he basically said that the first thing you have to learn is how to avoid a fight altogether, and that wanting a fight makes you an unsuitable student (I didn't see him again). I had been attacked though I was pretty much also provoking these assholes back, not long before.
I think that's what every martial artist wants. If you avoid the fight, that's the best thing you can do. Maybe you can talk and change the attacker's intention. Everything does not necessarily have to end up in a fight.