In fairness, what you're describing is a glitch, a bug. It's worse in certain areas than others. For instance, the kua-toa. If you have one person start combat with them far enough away from the other characters then the other characters can snipe away as much as they want. It's not supposed to work that way though. It's just a bug in the system.
You say that... but it was like that in D:OS2, it is
still like that in D:OS2 after countless patches and updates, and it has been like that since day one of BG3's EA... so whether they care about it enough to declare it a bug, or whether they laugh at it and say 'look, isn't it funny how you can exploit the system we made', the odds of it being addressed are dwindlingly slim as the days go by. It seems that "when you attack an enemy you are drawn into combat, unless you are outside of a particular range" is simply how the system works, and always has because they don't care to fix or change it.
You took the words right out of my mouth... or rather out of my fingers which type my words.
Go look at my "Why this game is awesome" post and know that I love this game. However, what I don't love is that I have to pretend I don't know certain gimmicks and just force myself to play by rules I myself have to establish in order to make the game make sense and such.
When I play a D&D video game, I don't want to have to remember all the nuances and rules. I want the game to remind me of the rules so I don't have to be the DM anymore. That's part of why I like D&D video games. I get to be the player for once. I am ALWAYS the DM.
So when I play BG3, as much as I love it, I find myself constantly having to go, "Wait. That's not one of the rules. Right? Ah dang! The NPCs are breaking the rules again. They're shoving people 30+ feet, throwing potions and healing groups of people who are all clustered together, using Bonus actions to cast spells that are higher than Cantrips right after casting a Level 1 spell or higher as an Action," etc. etc. etc. I also have to govern myself in order to play the game right, but I have absolutely no control over whether the NPCs play by the correct D&D rules. So I typically get sick of being disadvantaged at every turn because I play by the rules and the NPCs don't.
So, when it comes to stealth, I have to once again be my own dang DM. I COULD exploit the janky system once again and have my characters sit there and pummel an enemy endlessly from a distance while they are frozen in time locked in combat with one of my PCs, or I could have them shoot once and then move into position on purpose to get sucked into combat like everyone else. It's annoying and frustrating, and lots of times in order to "play by the rules" I have to put my characters in disadvantageous positions just so they enter combat. So either I sit there and exploit the ridiculous Stop Time stealth feature or I have to put my characters in disadvantageous positions in order to have them included in proper combat.
I get that with Multiplayer, it would be difficult to suck everyone in the party into a single combat. That made sense to me. It is true that if you are playing multiplayer and you are not in the same basic area, it would suck if you are pulled into combat when you can't even really engage in combat with the same group of enemies because you're like 1,000 feet away.
I also have actually come to terms with the Stop Time even in single player mode. What I discovered is that it is EXTREMELY difficult to maneuver all your party members into the positions you want to move them in when you have enemies moving about constantly. Because you are just 1 player trying to manipulate and maneuver 4 characters, you have to leave 3 characters not moving while you move a 4th into place. Then you have to hope the enemies don't find the 4th character while you move the 3rd into place. Then you have to hope they don't find either of those 2 while you move the other two into place, 1 character at a time. If the enemy spots 1 of your previously moved characters, that character doesn't get a surprise round like they would if you were just 1 player controlling 1 character.
So, it is nice to have Stop Time once the first character triggers Surprise Attack. Then you can carefully move the rest of the characters into place and have them get a surprise attack.
HOWEVER, what I don't like is, again, that you can just sit there and pummel them in Stop Time. As long as my characters get 1 Surprise Attack and only 1 Surprise Attack, I'm happy with the system in terms of it not necessarily pulling everyone in as soon as 1 character initiates combat.
