For the most part, I want to leave as much as possible unchanged. Yes, it's sub-optimal, but that's not the same as unplayable. The most important thing is for people to enjoy themselves, and drastically changing the rules is not conducive to this.
Essentially, I want a system that is as much fun to play as possible, while still being possible to ref, easy to understand, and not breaking immersion too much. I also want the character classes to be balanced for the most part.
Broken down by class:
Alchemy: I would like to see Alchemists become much more of a hands-on class with both the motivation and the means to do stuff in interactives and possibly even linears. Motivation is easy: Fancy potion ingredients not obtainable in downtime. The means is slightly harder and requires alchemy skills that are useful in uptime. I've already put forward some suggestions. I would also like Alchemists to be balanced even with the awful pseudo-economy that we have at the moment.
Subterfuge: I would like to see the back of the horribly unphysreppable and immersion-breaking skills like Acute Hearing and hide-and-sneak, and to put some actually useful (possibly combat-based, like a levelled version of Backstab) skills in to replace them. I would also like Disguise to be fixed - at the moment, it's absurdly powerful and doesn't contribute to the enjoyment of roleplaying that much. I think Aliases is a good alternative. Finally, I'd like to debug the Knockout skill.
Wilderness: I think Wilderness mostly OK, but as above I want to banish the unphysreppable tat and replace it with something good.
Warrior: Not broken, don't fix.
Mages: Were fine until we introduced regenerating mana. They need rebalancing, and badly. I don't think the fundamentals of the class need to change and I don't think we need to add or remove any skills, just sort out the correct amounts of mana supply, regeneration, and usage. They're the best linearing class by a mile at the moment.
Priests: Lose out hard compared to Mages, and aren't very linear-capable at the moment. I don't think the class needs many changes, though, because they can do a lot in Interactives. I would like to make the Smite Body tree more useful and interesting, but that's about it. In terms of balancing I think they only look bad next to mages because mages are currently broken. Priests should be able to do a lot of things that mages simply cannot do, and I think that this mostly comes about in Rites. Since we haven't had that many Rites in full view of the entire bar, most people don't know the full extent of what Priests can actually do.
Things that aren't to do with any particular class:
The Economy: What economy? It's horrible, but I think it would take entirely too much effort to ever fix it. I can live with it as it is. Note: My opinion on this may change after a year of reffing.
Races: Mostly fine as they are. I do NOT want to radically rework racial packages! I want them to be balanced, but if that's not possible, I am happier with racial packages being underpowered than I am with them being overpowered. At the moment, Pyrokin seems a lot better than Hydrokin due to the abundance of Red damage and the near-absence of Green damage.
Rituals: I love them so much. The power to risk ratio might need tweaking a little way to the risk side, but that's mostly just me being evil. I'll probably have more to say once I've found out a bit more about the limits of what can be done with Rituals.
Rites: Again, I love them. I'd like to see rites in the bar with priests trying to rope as many people into participating as possible. I'll probably have more to say once I've seen the list of common Rites.
Balance between the two: I think the power level should be approximately equivalent. Rituals have the advantage that you can get very powerful effects with just one person, and you can feed random magical junk to elementals in exchange for power, but the disadvantages that you need to do them in a particular place and that you get EXACTLY what you ask for whether you like it or not.
Rites have the advantage that your god already likes you and will probably interpret what you ask for correctly, as long as you're very polite, plus you can do them anywhere; but in order to get real power going you either need a lot of people or a really significant sacrifice.
Personally, I think Rites and Rituals should work both scripted and unscripted. Scripted Rites are standard things which give you a specific bonus in exchange for a specific act of devotion, and some are very well known. Scripted Rituals have been prepared in advance but are usually designed exclusively for the purpose. Unscripted Rituals are very risky and require a lot of quick thinking in order not to blow up horribly, but they're quite possible. Unscripted Rites are less risky (Well, mostly. I'm sure we all remember the Four Horsemen.) but they need to be done for the right REASON in order to avoid annoying the deity.
More to come later?
You say "I would also like Alchemists to be balanced even with the awful pseudo-economy that we have at the moment." I think a better way of thinking about it would be to balance them without it - write the system for them such that an alchemist with infinite money is not much more powerful than an alchemist with very little. --Jacob
Which is all good, but leaves us with the problem of how to ration the access of non-alchemist PCs to potions, especially on linears with no alchemists. Anyone got any good ideas? Possibly a skill "alchemist contacts - may take P points of potions on a linear, or P+Q if they are supplied by PCs? --Jacob