>>718282162
It would certianly help if there were faster methods of unlocking said conversations, but I think I'd still prefer that over a TRPG with a comparatively tiny cast. The conversations and large casts add a lot of replayability to those types of games imo and you get to learn more about a character the more time you're willing to put into them which I find interesting.
There's also the gameplay aspect of using a character that you maybe entirely ignored on your first run, but that part doesn't really apply to UO as much since the game is so easy that unit builds are pretty much pointless.

Now if it was a more traditional JRPG, then give me the smaller cast.

>>718282392
It's been a while since I played UO, but yeah I do remember now that some characters had that issue of not having enough possible rapport conversations to flesh out their character which in that case yeah, I never liked it when FE gave you units that could only have a conversation with the protag and maybe one other character either. I'd rather that character just not exist and give those convos to someone else.