More inventory slots and/or armor/weapon 'customization' so to speak.
- For example, wearing chainmail armor and having a separate slot for surcoats, so you can have surcoats and other things (cloaks, pilgrim disguise?) over more types of armor without having to model each one individually.
- 'Vanilla' helmets, then being able to add aventail or padded cloth or veils etc.
- Leg armor actually separated from body armor? I.E. being able to wear a shirt and no pants... if you're into that kinda thing.
- Certain weapons made of different 'parts'. A polearm could be made with a longer or shorter shaft, swords could have varying lengths or even pommels or handguards to make them more balanced or deal more damage.
- Shields with specific parts, like you can put a groove in a normal shield for thrusting with a polearm, or reinforcing shields with metal bits to be a bit more resilient. (Not really an expert here [or anywhere for that matter] but I hope you know what I mean)
- Armor and clothes should also be modifiable some in terms of color. For eample, you could have one model and texture for a metal helmet, but depending on the material it's made of the color could change so it looks like copper or steel. Rust decals could be applied if it's rusted, and so forth. Most cloth should be able to be almost any color without having different models and textures for each possible color.
- EDIT: Blood splatter should be more visible on player models and weapons as seen here instead of turning you into some weird ugly red-tinted... thing.
- Ability to add more straw to your straw hat.
In multiplayer the 'view outfit' button should make the player model look in the direction the camera is facing (First head moves, then upper body moves the further you look), same goes for cavalry regularly looking around. Singleplayer it should be a toggle of some sort so you can make those nice screenshots without your guy looking all over the place.
In Singleplayer the ability to have something to make your troops move quicker over the world map, making infantry only armies more viable. Not sure if wagons and such were used, but with only a couple hundred soldiers in a unit I think it would be more viable and make some sense.
Building upon that, maybe the map should have roads? Roads make you travel a bit quicker but are only connecting predetermined places. To get to certain places you'll have to go off the trail of course.
Off the grid terrain would be pretty awesome I think, and would make maps a lot more prettyful and appealing.
More info. Basically instead of a regular grid system it determines how many polygons should be used for certain parts of the heightmap, so a more flat area would use less but more rugged areas would use more instead of only going along a pre-defined grid.
Improve the way cavalry behaves.
- Driving a horse into a tiny door and having your character clip straight through the ceiling shouldn't happen, you should be knocked off or the horse should stop. This way you can have infantry-only sally ports that make more sense.
- (I thought somebody mentioned this already?) Hooked weapons to pull riders from horses foolish enough to go into the fray (Don't know if riders did the opposite to infantry, dragging them along with hooked weapons? o_O )
- Better horse physics all-around. Jumping just before you hit a low wall should not make you stop completely until you're high enough to suddenly regain all your lost momentum to fly over it. Timing should be more important.
- Riding into people shouldn't just knock them on their asses, they should be pushed back a ways or stumble over. (Oh, just saw Dalfador just said this XD whatever)
- Higher riding skill should allow you to fall off your horse better. You train yourself to recover from falling off horses, moving or not, that sort of thing. (Don't think this is something already in?)
Ability for more kinds of 'objectives.' Siege mode really bugs me. You could have a bunch of people inside the castle walls defending but because some guy snuck in somehow and lowered a flag you lose. This leads to people just clumping at the flag and mostly ignoring the walls. It should be more progressive, and perhaps have more choices. Going in from the back might move the attackers spawn a little forwards to give them an easier time of capturing the first wall, for example. Or you could forego the sneakiness and simply break through to the first objective if you feel you could do it. Just something to make it seem more interesting? Maybe have things such as battering rams? (Single and multiplayer) A bunch of people beating at the front gate with swords is a little silly.
Movable/carryable siege shields? Not entirely sure if these were real, but I remember they were big wooden things people carried in the first Stronghold games.
As has been mentioned a few times, yes co-op. A million times YES. I am a sucker for co-op.
