They fixed the thing that was annoying - the npcs talking during dialogues, which was extremely annoying and concentration breaking. Now, it still stays while you read a book, but it's not as annoying as you can usually go read the book in some quieter place.
I think the frequency and radius could be reduced a bit more.
I remember this was incredibly well done in Baldur's Gate 2. In the city you could hear all the time the distant chatter of people, like environmental noise and when you got near some voiced NPC it would say something occasionally.
Made the atmosphere great without being intrusive.
Something like that would be great.
