Cross game integration. I was recently playing Last Command B-Side, and in a certain part, the game picked stages themed around the games I have installed and it blew me away.

randomization of stats, on weapons and gear. i feel like that adds interesting elements, diablo 2 for example.

• an absence of quick-time events (I hate those things in cut-scenes, parry systems, etc.)
• a mode that allows the player to destroy the environment, NPCs, etc. including, when on, making the game unable to be completed potentially. I think having that be a toggle will still allow people to relive older RPGs where you could easily ruin your life without knowing for hours.
• Off-the-wall weapons. I think Blood 2 had a few and even halflife 2
• Counting beyond 2, speaking of the above.

A mechanic to permanently gain new attacks and/or abilities by mastering equipment. I haven't seen that many games have this mechanic and it's mostly been adult games for some reason. I think Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep is the only non-adult game I've seen to have this mechanic.

I just remembered another one. The Gambits system from Final Fantasy 12. I've always liked this mechanic because it almost completely automates battles, allowing you to focus more on exploration and treasure hunting. I have only seen two games do this and, once again, FF12 is the only non-adult game I've seen with this type of mechanic.

I wanna see games going wide again. Get me something like Sonic Adventure 2 Battle again where we got racing, going fast, a creature battler/care system, multiplayer. I miss when games were full of a wide variety of shit.

The control scheme in Total Annihilation where you can que up lots of commands for units has largely been ignored by RTS game makers except in Supreme Commander and Spring/Recoil engine games such as Beyond All Reason and Zero-K. I think it is a perfect example of why the RTS genre in many respects died after hyperfocusing on making Starcraft-likes resulting in the stagnation of innovation in a genre that progressively catered more and more only to a very narrow range of brains/players who enjoyed simplistic explicit rock-paper-scissors unit relationships and endless fiddly micro.

The Fiend's Cauldron from Kid Icarus Uprising. At the start of a stage, you have to wager currency on how high of a difficulty you want to attempt, on a sliding scale from 0.0 to 9.0. Higher difficulties cost more to play, and if you fail, you lose your bet and the difficulty drops if you choose Continue. It's an interesting system for how it forces you to check your ego and self-evaluate just how much you think you can handle.