Parley wasn't horrible per se, it was just badly used(and the UI lag certainly didn't help). Hopefully this time around they will actually use it as a real mini game (say successfully "parley" with a npc shop and get a discount buff for a little while, like was heavily implied in 1.0 but never actually followed through on) instead of just being the one NPC who "taught" you and a few story missions being your only opponents.