The issue is that many game design decisions have been made explicitly for the benefit of MP at the expense of the SP experience, for example how party movement is handled.
I didn't mention party controls as I am doubtful if this is a choice that favours multiplayer. I can't see how it would make multiplayer experience better. In the best case scenario (full on 4 player coop) one controls one character and the game plays about as well if the game used the classic system. Also most post KOTOR Bioware singleplayer RPGs used similar control scheme - I suspect Larian is just following the newer trend.
The way I see it, in the classic way of controling the whole party (click a button or gather by drawing a box with the mouse) one person could conceivably take control of the whole party, whereas with this chain method a person has to manually link their character to the party for someone else to gain control of their character. But there ought to be very easy ways around this in MP, so I dunno. The abomination that is the uniquely-Larian chain method just seems like Larian's being cussed: "We invented it so we're gonna' stick with it no matter how utterly stupid and horrible it is."
