lengthy COOP RPGs are a hard sell as you need a group of 2-4 people to come and play a lenghty campaign together across multiple weels/months. I am sure there is audience for it, but that precisely what kills my interest in coop RPGs. A multiplayer game needs to be completed in one evening IMO. I think the benefit of origins is less that you can play as one, but that your coop partners can drop in and out, take over your companions and the game is to feel alright either way. Don't know if it works, but considering Larian is stickign to the design, it either did in D:OS2 or they believe that it can.
Yup. That's precisely what makes me yawn every time our Blackheifer starts lauding the virtues of playing this game in multiplayer and tooting his own horn about how he keeps in line his disciplined troop of
well trained soldiers friends in mutiplayer.
Been there, done that. I tried the multiplayer in DOS 1 and 2, and the outcome was always something among the lines of "Well, that was amusing to do once, but fuck me if we are going to schedule a recurring appointment to do this on a regular basis across several weeks".
These games live on their own momentum. There's the day you want to keep going for five-six hours straight and the day the idea of logging in, meet with others and try to achieve something according to a tight schedule will only make you groan, because you aren't in the mood.
Also, interestingly enough despise all focus Larian put into it and all the compromises it costed, MP turned out to be something that interested a fairly marginal portion of their audience (10-15% top), according to their own statistics.
Still, it's a "signature feature" for them and something to distinguish themselves on the market, so they are not going to drop it.