For me, it's actually more about realism and the game not functioning in a common-sense fashion. Here's what I mean:
My MC locks in conversation with a character. That character now faces away from his own goods, or a door he's supposed to be guarding or whatever. I switch to Astarion and sneak. Because said character locked in dialogue or combat or whatever is no longer facing in that certain direction, I could literally sneak Astarion all over the place and said character is frozen in time with 0 ability to attempt to spot Astarion robbing him or anything. 0. None. Why? The character is frozen in a weird time freeze.
Perfect example was during one PFH. Swen just had 1 character lock the Hag in dialogue and combat. Then he went to other unfrozen in time characters and spent obscene amounts of time positioning them just right while the hag could do nothing about it. They could free Mayrina, rob the hag of all her belongings and the hag is still frozen in time. They were outside the entire hag lair before combat started, and he brought them all the way into it.
So, it's weird, unreal, and I literally can't play with a decent working stealth system which would have enemies potentially spot you if you sneak around DURING someone's combat to try to save the damsel in distress. There is no stealth roll. You just lock the enemy in combat or dialogue and sneak outside of their cones.
It makes no sense for 1 character to be locked in 6 second rounds while every other character is moving in real-time. Every turn-based game I've played draws the whole world into turn-based if 1 is drawn in because the world is slowed down, not just a select group of characters.
Oh I see, but they'd have to rework the stealth system entirely. This is how it also worked in of Div:OS1, which is the earliest title I played from Larian, so it might just be a limitation of their games. "Distracting" npc's by chatting with them and looting let's say the paintings on the wall for some quick cash was just part of the game, even if it's silly at times.
I would be ok with the earlier suggestion, everyone gets dragged into combat in the nearby area(which cannot be too big otherwise it's just plain annoying if your character has to run to the encounter for 10 turns).
Here's the thing about features though. If this is the game working as intended, then Larian is going to build the rest of the game with those features in mind. They're going to build the game with the knowledge that the players have these tools in their toolbelts. Why should we assume that at higher levels, difficulty isn't going to be balanced around various exploits? If these are meant to be there, then what logic would move Larian to ignore them when thinking about how difficult to make enemies? Why wouldn't they give enemies more health when they know that players can throw healing potions? Why wouldn't they think "hey there should be a sneak puzzle here," thus forcing players to engage in the exploitable stealth system? Why wouldn't they inflate the cost of things in shops to account for how easy it is to game the store system? Why would they create all these systems and then forget about them when designing the rest of the game?
You're right, as mentioned above, I had to steal all stuff in town to sell so I could buy equipment to progress using these "features" on higher difficulties in their previous games.
Whenever I didn't use an optimized party comp or lacked equipment I did the cheese as mentioned in the OP.
They might very well push you to go this route(if they add higher difficulties) because fights could be unfair otherwise.
Personally I don't care, it can force you to be creative with the many tools at your disposal but I can see why people wouldn't like this.
