Here are a few of my thoughts. Feel free to pick them up, or pick them apart. Just throwing stuff at the wall to see if it sticks.
Item DropsI don't have a whole lot to say about this, but I definitely like the idea of random boxes dropping only (or mostly) a certain type of item, like 'mates, scapes, and maybe a rare buff item or something.
I did want to say that, if it's possible, the three 'mates should be percentage-based instead of healing a fixed number. Monomates would heal 33% of your HP, Dimates would heal 66%, and Trimates, 100%. This way these items would be useful to EVERYONE. Of course changing it to be this way would probably mean you'd want to have a tighter restriction on how many a player could carry with them, and their prices would likely go up a bit too.
Scape DollsDefinitely reduce how many one person can hold, or define the usage limit on a per-mission basis. Harder missions or missions with a lot of one-shotting enemies might be a bit more lenient on how many scapes you could use, while something simple, like Unsafe Passage would only allow you one or two uses per run.
Photon ArtsThere seem to be two major camps for photon art leveling. The one side likes the PSU-style of being able to level up through usage, and the other prefers PSO-style where you randomly find pre-leveled discs. I, myself, prefer the PSU-style because I knew that I would eventually be able to reach max on every PA I had. With PSO, I had no idea. There was a chance that I would never find half of those discs. I can certainly understand the appeal of being able to get lucky and go from a level 5 Foie to a level 30 all at once, but in the end, the RNG killed it for me.
So I thought about it a bit and realized that both styles should just be fused if possible. Basically it would involve creating a new item (or items) that would work similarly to a rare candy; a PA Grinder, if you will. Preferably it would be an item that you could use on any PA to automatically raise it a level. You could have multiple versions (PA Grinder C, PA Grinder B, etc.) that add more levels to your PA per use and increasing in rarity and cost. Being able to level up your PAs through use would still exist, but would probably remain fairly slow to counteract the speed that PA Grinders would allow.
As for how you'd go about applying a PA Grinder to a PA, I'm not exactly sure. The first thing that comes to mind is synthing. Since synthing is most likely going to be repurposed into an upgrade mechanic, an upgrade to your PAs fits nicely into it, and would likely be less effort to implement.
Racial BalanceAs someone who played as a female newman fortefighter, I'm all for the homogenizing of race (and gender) stats. That being said, I do like Agrajag's proposal for giving each race a unique aspect or two. Something more related to playstyle than straight up stat differences. Attack speeds, flinch resistance, range differences, number of enemies hit, etc. Preferably things that work no matter what class you are. I like difference in races going beyond the cosmetic, but only if it means I'm not being sub-standard by playing what I want.
Mission HotspotsIn my opinion, hotspots are good for the community. The majority of the people who were on my friend list were probably met from White Beast or one of the events and I'm sure a lot of you are in the same boat. This being said, a single hotspot that lasts forever (like WB) isn't good for the game. Assuming the mission difficulty-to-reward ratio is a bit more balanced on EGS, I propose an automated mission bonus rotation to create places for the community to gather without keeping them there for too long.
Essentially, it would mean that certain bonuses would be applied to missions; then removed and applied to a new mission or set of missions when time ran out--and preferably switched automatically by the server. Bonuses could include extra experience, mission points, drop rate, photon art experience, etc. To make sure that people are still spread out, a number of missions could be made into hotspots at a time (perhaps one per planet), each giving different bonuses so that players still had choices of what they feel they need the most of at the time. The amount of time that these mission bonuses would be applied could range from a single day to a whole month, however keeping the time short is probably preferable. The amount of bonus you'd get from these missions shouldn't be enough to totally detract from the other non-bonus missions available. I'd say somewhere from 15 to 30% bonus. It's not really a necessary addition, but would be a nice replacement for things like GBR and the various official events.
Mewn wrote:For me it's all about alternate paths to power - drops offer RNG-based progression and trade-ins represent time/farming-based progression.
I have to agree with Essen here. Trade missions are no good. Sure, they represent time/farming-based progression, but so does buying really expensive items in NPC shops, and that's a much more streamlined way to handle it in my opinion.