-To play as a mercenary.
I had a small problem with the Original Trilogy's morality system; you couldn't actually be evil. Pragmatic, yes, and you had the opportunity to be a backstabbing turd in the third game... but remember Zaeed's loyalty mission? After he blows up part of the refinery in the cutscene, there's no opportunity to just outright agree with him that, yeah, killing Vido takes priority over saving the workers. Even Renegade Shepard is all "we'll discuss this later." This was especially frustrating because you could agree with Garrus about a virtually identical scenario in his backstory in the first game (you just couldn't, you know, play through it).
I want the option to be more than morally ambiguous. I want an ending - an entire final level or two - that varies based not on some "Option A or B" choice I make immediately beforehand, but rather on my character's overall morality. Even if you're just swapping out which enemies you're fighting, which is as I understand it what KOTOR did, that would be acceptable. I want to be able to do outright evil things and later express remorse and seek atonement. I've said before that my absolute favorite scene in Mass Effect 3 is the one where Renegade Shepard confesses to Garrus that they sabotaged the Genophage cure. I want more of that.
-To play as an alien.
They didn't really push the whole "humans as underdogs" thing as much as they could have. After the first game, either everyone hates humanity in general for killing the last Council, or everyone distrusts Shepard for working with Cerberus. I want to complain about uppity humans who think they run the place. I also want the more varied mixes of abilities that your various non-human squadmates got. (Come on, Concussive Shot, Armor-Piercing Ammo and Overload? I'd sacrifice everyone to the Reapers for Garrus's skillset.)
-For the female character to actually have muscles.
Look, you don't have to make her Brienne of Tarth from A Song of Ice and Fire or the Female Barbarian from Diablo III. But come on, FemShep was a stick figure. It was handwaved a bit in Mass Effect 2 with the "muscle density" favor text on one of the melee damage boosters, but still.
-A batarian squadmate.
Again, to go with the whole "alien perspective" thing. We saw more batarians suffering in the third game than we saw humans, and that actually made me care about the four-eyed terrorists for once.
-A significant subplot involving biotics.
I'm not saying "do Dragon Age II in space," but the "persecuted biotics" thing kind of got papered over after the first game.
-Straight love interests.
I never thought I'd have to write this one, but apparently there was a big kerfuffle after Dragon Age 2 made all the LIs bisexual and then Mass Effect 3 gave FemShep 2 straight romances (both of whom might be dead by the time the third game rolls around) and 3 lesbian ones (plus 3 more straight ones and 2 more lesbian ones that you need DLC for and/or don't grant the Paramour achievement). Making all the LIs bisexual was incredibly lazy and encourages lazy gameplay; I got so much more out of the Mass Effect series when I started playing as FemShep, which I only did so I could see the Garrus romance in 2. Killing or breaking up two of Femshep's four available straight romances... what was that? Aside from the obvious, I mean.
-Alignment-based love interests.
You're welcome to have disagreements with your LI, by any means, but come on, do you really think, for example, that Jack would have any interest whatsoever in Shepard after he gives Cerberus the Collector Base? (Yeah, this came up a little bit in 2, where BroShep faced the possibility of losing a romance if he agreed with the wrong person during the Jack/Miranda and Tali/Legion arguments. More, please.) (Not to say that every romance has to go this way: I like that either FemShep and Garrus can encourage each other's Renegade qualities, or FemShep can nudge them both into Paragon territory... not that I've ever done the latter...)
-Armor like in 2, weapons like in 3.
In Mass Effect 2, the best approach to customizing your armor was to use one of the DLC armors for the first half of the game and then switch over to the N7 armor once you'd bought enough pieces for it to make it better than the DLC armor. In 3 it was the opposite, just replace "DLC" with "store-bought." You'd collect pieces of N7 armor, but they only provided an up to 55% attribute boost, whereas the store-bought armors provided 60% and the Citadel DLC armors provided 70%. The end result was that every Shepard ended the game wearing one of maybe four or five different suits of armor.
Also, I don't particularly like how in 3 you started out with a 50% health boost and had to eat into that when you wanted to boost your weapon damage or shield recharge speed or anything else. In 2, you each piece of starting armor (except the helmet) gave you a 3% boost in some random field. I'd like to see you start off with something more like that in ME4, and collect both 3%, 5% and 10% boosts as the game progresses. And finally, while ME3's replay system is on the whole better than ME2's (you keep all the weapon upgrades, facial scars and morality points), it just bugged me that ME3 reset your armor for the first mission, whereas on a ME2 replay you could drag your neon green-and-gold armor out of the locker from the word go.
But if ME3 was a step backwards in terms of armor, it was a big step forwards in terms of weapons. So many possibilities. And we weren't limited to which weapon types our class was allowed to carry. (Hey, how about next game you give the squaddies a weight limit? Because I'm not sure why Ashley suddenly lost her ability to use shotguns, for example.) But as I was saying, I really like the incredible variety of weapons there were in ME3, compared to ME2, where it was just "starter weapon, upgraded weapon, supergun you got from the Collector ship, DLC weapon." And bringing back weapons mods from 1 was another great step for 3. Just de-nerf the Mattock for 4, please.
Oh, but a special weapon that you only get for beating missions on higher difficulties (a la the Geth Pulse Rifle from 2)? Yes, please.
-Scars.
The only real problem I had with the whole Project Lazarus thing (aside from Shepard's knowledge of it suddenly being retconned at the end of 3) was that it erased Shepard's badass facial scar from the first game. Bring that option back, rather than forcing us to rely on mods. Thanks.
-Something something squadmate powers.
When it comes to Virmire, I had always saved Ashley more often than Kaidan. But that discrepancy skyrocketed after ME3 came out. Here's why: between 1 and 3 they completely retooled the power system, and suddenly what ME2 called Squad Disruptor Ammo becomes utterly invaluable in 3. Ashley's the only squadmate who has it in 3. And on top of that, she's the only squadmate other than Garrus who carries a sniper rifle.
What I'm saying is that the Virmire Choice is for me an entirely tactical one because of how the squadmate powers work. If they want something like it in 4 to be based on the characters, rather than their abilities, they need to address this issue.
-Virmire.
...remains the best mission ever. If they were to simply remake it, I wouldn't complain.
-Proper playtesting.
Nothing was more frustrating in both 2 and 3 than watching Shepard's health bar vanish while (s)he refused to Biotic Charge an enemy standing right in front of him/her.
-Unique bosses.
This was one area where I really felt let down by the gameplay in Mass Effect 3. I miss Tela Vasir and the Reaper Fetus.
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