With the new forum software being in development, I am certain theymos won't make any major changes on Bitcointalk unless it's related to the security of the board and its members, or directly influences the user experience when browsing the forum.
I can only recommend you try LoyceV's Notification BOT suggested to you by Insanerman. I have been using it for a couple of weeks and it works just fine.
AFAIK if new forum software - Epochtalk, would be used to create a new Bitcointalk forum, then I know that tagging would be easy as the Epochtalk uses AngularJS that has the capability to push notifications plus, with the speed of PostgresQL, it can really be possible. But I don't know yet if the Epochtalk software supports instant database update nor has the functionality to store changes and updates the users without requiring the user to refresh their platform. But yes, theymos doesn't really has the control of the SMF's software and there's no way that call codes and tags would be enhanced and implemented to push notifications in the current platform.
If you are newbie, you will not receive many calls from other members.
If you are famous member, you can get many tags and if you use mention not, you will receive many annoying notifications.
I don't know if it really is annoying to "famous" users but I only see less people tag others with @ syntax or even mentions them. Maybe a 15% chance?