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A lot of it is logistics. It's not for everyone, just those of us who go on dive vacations to dive not vacation.
Most of the year on the Aggressor you dive Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac in one week (sometimes weather precludes the last stop). That would take at least 10+ days allowing for no-fly days in between. Plus who wants to pack/unpack their luggage 3X. And pay for 3x the flights as afaik you have to connect back to GC to fly home.
It gets even better when you venture further out. We did a trip to CaySal Banks some years ago on the now defunct Nekton. Dove Bimini, the Bahamas Bank, Cay Sal Banks and several blue holes - except for Bimini none of them have an inhabitable island where you could base yourself. The only way to get to CaySal is via liveaboard.
The Utila Aggressor dives Utila, Roatan and an offshore sea mount in one week. Again to do that non-lob would require a travel day in between. Plus IDK if anybody goes out to the seamount. In addition they usually circle Utila diving all 4 sides. All of the day boats are based on the south side so I don't think any Utila based ops dive the north side much after noon. With 2 or 3 exceptions neither island has good shore diving options either.
We did Turks/Caicos Explorer last year. The best diving is a tiny uninhabited cay called French Cay. Dayboats from Provo do go out there - it's 45mins. 1 way, do two dives and then return. We did 5 dives there each day. We also dove West Caicos and NW Provo. West Caicos is uninhabited also so would be done from Provo most likely. On our travel day we did both in 1 24hr. period. Some itineraries the boat also goes to Grand Turk. So 3-4 islands per trip staying on the same ship the entire time.
Explorer also does a St. Kitts, Saba, St. Maarten run. Try doing that w/o multiple connecting flights and several days travel. Even Explorer can't get back so they turn the boat at the end of the week - you fly into St. Kitts and out of St. Maarten or vice-versa.
Did I mention the easy 5 dives per day that are possible? 2 before lunch, 2 after and one at night. All about 40' from my room. I typically do 25-27 dives on a week long trip - would be more but most boats have a travel day/afternoon on either end. Maybe it's because we're all really hungry but I've had some great meals on liveaboards also - the quality of the food is frequently mentioned in trip reports.
Except for Turks/Caicos I've dove most of the locations mentioned above from land. At every single one doing 4 dives/day was almost impossible. Either the operators didn't schedule it or the logistics of getting to/from the divesites made it impractical or impossible.
I'll agree that the one liveaboard I can't figure out is the Kona Aggressor - most of the sites they dive are accessible from either shore or dayboat. In fact they jokingly call it the cellphone liveaboard as you're almost never out of range. But diving the length of the Kona coast from shore would require longer travel times thus cutting down on the dives/day - most of the diveboats are based in a marina north of Kailua/Kona. Most return mid-afternoon to prep for the night Manta dives also.
