I think it's much better than what it was, and I think player requests were perfectly reasonable. That said, I think this is one of the areas where Larian just plain goofed. NPCs shouting the same lines ad infinitum doesn't make a city seem more lively, it makes it seem more artificial. Games like Baldur's Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights did it much better, in my eyes, with a constant but nondescript background murmur.
