I agree that they are somewhat nice to have around, but I'd much prefer it if they had their ability to inflict damage significantly nerfed.
If you want to play a pirate character early in the morning it's a significant challenge to try and concentrate on stopping a trader while 2498129819823981 npc's are shooting at you and forcing you to constantly dodge. It's not so bad in Liberty but pretty much anywhere else they cause problems because a group of them can cause a significant amount of damage pretty fast.