Since they've gone more in the direction of realistic crime drama, I wouldn't expect it ever again, tbh. For the simple reason that there's no a lot of depth to it. It's an artificial mechanic.
That is really the source of most of the fan complaints.
R* has shifted gear this gen (not only with GTA, but all their games) and some people still have to (or don't want to) catch up with it.
It applies to them refusing to compromise with the fat/thin mechanic, too- it's not alright to simply have you go on a marker and press a button to become fat or thin, they have to adjust every detail around it, as i said in an earlier post, to reflect that change.
I think it's something that has worked against them in GTA4, because there was a clash of realism and old style mechanics, that made for an alive world and boring ass game, and got better in RDR were they experimented more with this idea; i think this 3 characters thing is really a winning move for them, as it can eliminate a lot of downtimes, give a lot of variety, but keep that immersion and great sense of context intact.
Love it or Hate it, it's a very unique approach, that is hard to simply mockup or replicate, without a particular vision and a buttload of monies, contrary to the Ps2 games, that saw a lot more direct competitors.
It's no more simply a game of shoving in more content, but it's about doing it while mantaining an incredibly solid sense of place and context to everything.
Whether you like it or not, i think it's good for the genre, because it pushes competition to go and try their things (as we've seen in Just Cause, Saint's Row or Sleeping Dogs, this being the closest one) giving us a more varied panorama of open world action games.
