Some thoughts I've been sitting on for a few days:
So single-player... I can't see a satisfying way for the competitive questing to work in single-player. I am sure that there are some people who would enjoy RP'ing questing different sides, trying to one-up or cheat the other one. I am on the side who thinks that would be stupid.
The big reason why is this: If I have full control over all party members progress as they go about questing, then I have full control over which side wins. Because I can only control one person's actions at a time, then I am controlling one person's progress at a time and it is completely at my discretion how far I let them get.
The entrance to the town thing is another example of how multiplayer and single-player might work against each other. In multiplayer, it's cool for the dwarf to be turned away at the gate, because the Dwarf's player gets to go off and have a solo adventure while the other party members are wandering around town. Great! But in single-player, I can only control one group at a time, and so I'm forced to split my focus and leave one group somewhere. (Well, okay I can scratch this comment as it is possible to talk a guard into letting everyone in.)
Either I spend time controlling the dwarf and finding a way to get the Dwarf into town, or else I leave the dwarf and wander town with everyone else. Just getting the party back together could feel like busywork.
In single-player, I don't see any point to killing a fellow party member or sending them to jail, especially since Larian has indicated that you WILL be forced to take them with you to the next questing zones and the end of the game no matter what. So killing/jailing party members seems completely counter-productive and useless in single-player.
The only thing which would seem to be a possible solution was if your party members were AI controlled and could wander around and take actions on their own. But that's only a theoretical solution. It is less that I don稚 have faith that Larian could program an AI to do that, it is that I do not think ANYONE could program an AI to do that. It's just not possible. Human players wander around talk to NPC's, faff around, take their time, go shopping... If there is an AI with its own objectives, it won't do that, it値l try and complete them pretty quickly, and that would change the SP into a race versus the AI. I don't think that Larian has anywhere close to the amount of resources it would take to program a competitive questing AI that would be satisfying to play against. I do not really think ANYONE has that much time and money.
So I guess the only remaining aspects of the competitive questing which will appear in SP are if the party wanders into a certain area, suddenly a dialogue may trigger and a party member stabs you in the back without warning to try and complete their objectives, and then I guess it's a matter of who wins the ensuing fight.
