Everything. Swen said that the "main" PC gets to have his origin quest, and the rest of the PCs don't. They're just there to support the One Hero. There's no competition, there's no question of who's going to win in the end, there's no tension or genuine interest. The question is now "HOW is the One Hero going to win?" Before, the question was "WILL PC #1 win at all?" In terms of narrative, these questions are night and day. I was excited for a game with conflict that was meaningful on a level that RPGs have never dared to go to before.
So only play in multiplayer.
How the ***k exactly do you expect "competitive questing" to work in SINGLE-PLAYER? Because playing against yourself is lame, it would be just as predetermined if you chose which of the different heroes competing objectives won.
Even if it was possible to write AI which was smart enough to compete versus fellow party members, it still wouldn't work right because there's no way to make a timer for the AI completing objectives which would work without always beating the player or always losing. A large part about the appeal of D:OS and such is the freeform nature which let you wander around and take your time.
Plus with combat being turn-based and letting other players wander around in real-time, that would create even more headaches with an AI timer.
None of this problem is new, it was talked about when the D:OS 2 kickstarter started. It was said back then that single-player would not have competitive questing. I can only conclude that you were not paying attention.
The fact that you're talking about "THE player character" instead of "the player CHARACTERS" illustrates the entire point in a nutshell.
Sorry this isn't Icewind Dale 2. Maybe what you're looking for is Pillars of Eternity? Oh wait, I don't think that has competitive questing in it.
Have you ever played pen & paper role-playing games? Watch the GM. He plays more than one character every session, and they aren't a hive mind that all work together. NPCs fight each other, argue with each other, work at cross purposes, even go to war against each other. Nobody questions why this is good and important. So if it's fun and good storytelling for one person to write the actions of more than one character if he's the GM, why is it bad and wrong for a player to want to do the exact same thing when controlling multiple PCs?
There is a difference between a human GM and a computer program. The program is infinitely more restricted in what it can and cannot do.
Oh good, so all I have to do is schedule 40+ hours of concurrent play time with 3 other busy adults. Nothing inconvenient about that.
Sorry. Your computer game which allows you to create all party members with custom backgrounds and have AI which lets them feasibly compete against each other to complete conflicting objectives
simply does not exist within the current limits of technology, AI, and design. Check back in a couple hundred years.
