One thing that I thought would be interesting is if all NPCs (those that you increase friendship with) would have some sort of player pattern recognition. Here's what this would look like in-game: all NPCs you interact with will passively watch your patterns and interact with you according to the patterns associated to that interaction after a period of time of a consistently repeated action. For example; Always talking to the same person within the same hour of a specific time in the day (say 9:00 a.m.); this of course would not count toward shop interactions as buying and selling stuff isn't really socializing. Ways that this would be interesting would be that the NPCs could then offer flavor text that talks about their “Daily or Weekly” interactions and how much they (might) enjoy them... just as one minor example. This could also add a slight increase for their regard for you as a friend (or more if an available marriage candidate), but this added bonus would not be better than the Friendship Bundle bonus.
I'm a little confused about what this would accomplish. Do you mean that as your relationships go up, NPCs would learn your habits and adjust theirs to try and find you? Why? My habits change pretty often, I'd rather learn where the NPCs will be when I need to find them then have their routine change because they tried to predict mine.
Well, I wasn't thinking to the extreme that they'd change THEIR schedule to try and find you, it'd be more that they recognize how often you come to visit them and would probably bring it up in conversation. The idea would be that their regard for you as a friend would slightly increase if your patterns are consistent. Other than that, I just thought it'd be interesting, if nothing else.
