The possibility to have your party members roam different parts of the world independently was presented as a feature of great potential.
I found it happen quite a bit during my coop D:OS times - one player would end up shopping for longer, while the other would start exploring - if the 2nd player run into combat encounter, 1st player could join him at his own leasure.
I don't think EVERY creature and player on the map should enter turn based mode when a combat encounter happens, but surely, it must be possible to design a system where characters within the close vicinity are pulled in as soon as combat starts.
I did speculate back during EA, if perhaps it is lack of some awerness mechanics that stops Larian from going that route - for example, during harpy fight in act1, it is possible to draw quite a few NPCs from the grove is the battle spreads too close to the beach exit. It is not impossible, that if the game would start draw in character within a radious it could have a domino effect without additional system to govern who is aware that the combat starts. Still, it is something I hoped Larian would figure those things out, third time around.
I addressed an even more annoying problem with TB back in the old megathread, regardless of whether it's TB in general or Larian's implementation: But you can't do simultaneous attacks, which I also really, really miss.
Yeah, ambushing is broken in both ways - it can be really abused, but it can also screw you over. It's something that could be made more intuitive and better balanced, if initiating combat would just... initiate combat, rather than putting characters in different dimentions. I remember some annoying encounters in D:OS2 where stealthed enemies continue to move in real time after the combat started, and burn through party HP by backstabbing them and entering combat afterwards, before I was able to figure out what's going on. At least I don't remember that happening in BG3.
