Some way of automatically propagating that network prefix to anything connected to the network would be nice. Otherwise we're just stuck punching in IP addresses like barbarians.
Router Advertisements propagate the subnet information (prefix, dns server, etc.) to clients in the network. Prefix delegation allows downstream routers to request subnets from upstream routers. MDNS lets network devices announce their services to the subnet.
The good riddance part of IPv4 DHCP is the server maintained state. The broadcast-config thing is still there. RADVD is the standard Linux daemon for this.