Main reason I added hangouts was to add more personality to NPCs. You were supposed to take them out on "dates" and learn more about them and so on. The mood and relationship boost was just a bonus.
It became obsolete the moment I added propper cutscene system, since it does pretty much everything I wanted to do with the hangouts.
As for the machanical part, I have two ways planned to make getting relationship easier.
First one is gifts. Quite a simple mechanic. You will be able to give one item to one NPC per week and and you will get a relationship bonus depending if they like that item (or it gets lowered if they hate it).
The second way to get relationship will be much more complex. I intend to overhaul the way working and weekly activities work. Instead of doing one thing for the entire week, you will be able to schedule every day of the week.
The core of the game will stay the same. You will still spend seven days doing some kind of activity and then get one day where you walk around freely like you do now. You will just be able to manage those seven days better.
You will be able to work, train and rest like you can now, but I will add way more options. Things like mining, cutting trees, hanging out with NPCs, begging, working for your faction and so on. You will asign one of these activities for each work day. You can rest the entire week, work for five days, rest for one and hang out with certain NPC for the last day, or work for all seven days, each day for different NPC.
You will schedule your work week from your hideout so you won't have to hunt down the specific NPC you want to work for, but there are still benefits for talking to every NPC from time to time.
On top of that, this will allow me to make certain jobs and activities locked from the start. For example, the blacksmith won't let you work for him unless you have certain strength level, Olaf won't let you work for him unless you already have friend and so on.
There is more, but this is a big enough wall of text already. This overhaul will take some time and I'm not sure if I should do this or the faction system first, since they would both benefit from each other.