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.
I think I am starting to understand difference between Larian's systemic design and Arcanes systemic design (which I brought up to discuss in this older thread). Arcane's systemic design adds gameplay, Larian's - removes it. The situation you discribe doesn't add to stealth, it more or less removes it. That's I think is the fundametal flaw I find with many of so called "cheese" mechanics. They don't add a wrinkle to the gameplay, that can be utilized and combined with other pieces, it hacks off chunks of potentially interesting content.
In this istance at least. As it was pointed out before, shortcomings of the stealth system are numerous and multifaceted.
