I suggest two general traits should be observed: (1) diminishing returns to everything (e.g. diminishing returns to elite-ness, to gear, to area knowledge, etc.), and (2) reduce time investment into unpleasant activities. The second will strike many of you hardcore CFers as diluting the hardcore-ness of CF, but I think with our increasing age and commitments it's not really possible to hang on to the old glory hardcore days.

(1) Diminishing returns

(a) Diminishing returns to using the same skill over and over again. This imitates the WoW-style "rotation" gameplay which (on a facile level) seems complex and interesting but really is just mixing up the buttons. But gamer psychology means that we are wired to enjoy executing a "rotation" instead of just the same skill over and over.

(b) Diminishing returns to lagging skills. For example, spamming bash, cranial, pincer, etc. They should have a more potent effect when they are first used in this recent period, but suffer from diminishing returns quite quickly. As timers wear off, they may be used again at full efficacy. This means that if someone hasn't bashed you yet in a fight, be very careful that they could bash you for 4 rounds if they're lucky, and thus execute a kill like bash-jab-flurry, or even bash-disarm-bash (pick up weapon but not able to wield it before next bash).

(c) Diminishing returns to damage skills. For example, an invoker should be encouraged to mix up his spells instead of spamming engulf. Invent more mechanics that "store charges" and "unleash" them, e.g. weaker spells that increment counters that allow for creation of bigger and more complex effects. When your opponent is storing up charges, you have to start being aware that he may be able to unleash certain sequences that can kill you. You can add complexity to improve the quality of the mind-games at play here, e.g. an invoker may start introducing "passive damage sources" (think rain of stone, shield of electricity) and spend his charges to create reliable lag followed by a single big finisher.

(d) Diminishing returns to gear. All gear should be re-scaled from a scale of item level 20 (weakest, e.g. 1 dam 10 hp leggings), to item level 50 (strongest, e.g. 3 dam 2 str leggings). The strongest item should be only 2.5 times stronger than the weakest item. Outfit gear should be item level 20 and shops should sell up to item level 30 unlimited, some item level 40 limited. People will still want to compete and fight hard for those item level 50 items due to rarity and the slight edge (remember Edges?). Progs should count as item levels, and overly-strong progs should just not exist (Mel-Kartha's prog for example).

(e) Diminishing returns to area knowledge. All data on items should be in a searchable database (including limited items and preps), with their area included, but perhaps not the exact details of where they are. Reward explorers by giving them "muscle memory" over the exact locations of these things, and zone familiarity when fighting. Maybe area explore could be kept in to make explorers happy, but the items there should not be game-breaking, i.e. item level 50 is only 2.5 times stronger than the weakest item.

(f) Diminishing returns to prepping. Remove obscure and powerful preps like lifesurge etc., and make certain preps less binary in their effects: e.g. spiderhands should not exist in prep form, but something that gives disarm-resistance could take its place). Damage reduction should be weaker.

(2) Reducing time spent on unpleasant things

(a) If people like skill grinding (it's nice to have something to do), maybe reduce the difference between 75% to 100%. Make it so practice makes you only 10% better than someone who didn't grind. The difference between 75% spell success and 100% spell success is pretty huge. This way you could legitimately feel like you could somewhat compete without grinding skills. To satisfy the grinders with a feeling of progress maybe re-scale it so that you go from 90 to 100, but in 0.1 increments (100 increments to reach perfection). Scale the usefulness of INT in some other way, e.g. you could simply perform skills better with higher INT, particularly complex skills like spellcasting).

(b) Increase skill gain from PK-use. To prevent "sparring" from being a tactic to raise skills fast, you could check if they've had gains with each other before. If they have, and neither has killed the other yet, then slow the gains. If one kills the other, raise the gains back for the one who died.

(c) Allow skills that you don't normally use that much in PK (e.g. parting blow, evade) to also benefit from gains in PK. That is, fighting in PK could randomly give you insight into a skill you need, without you having to execute that skill. This encourages more PKing, and gives a consolation prize especially to PK losers.

(d) Skill gains from just player interaction (e.g. calculate by how many characters you've let another player read: punish if player obviously abuses it). If you want to sit in the Inn and chat with people you could still have random skill gains (capped to be slower than practising on mobs so not much incentive to abuse really). This means ranking on mobs in a group while interacting will lead to doubly-good learning rates. Also, group ranking should multiply the skill learning rate proportionate to how much more quickly you're killing the mobs.

(e) With a prep overhaul you should need fewer preps. Also, preps should be more concentrated in fewer areas, e.g. major shops should stock more of them. You should be able to buy "prep sets", like a pack containing standard preps a <class> might need, e.g. fly enlarge reduce detect recall teleport for warriors.

(f) You should be able to "reserve" up to X non-limited equipment items, and half of your non-limited preps, so that upon death they just return straight to you. Thieves that steal them will not be able to sac them, and they will return to you after 24 hours of being stolen. You should always be able to get a container, that is you can just make one out of thin air any time. When you die, the victor may choose to rifle through your prep bag, but only be able to loot half your non-limited preps. Your ghost will have a copy of the prep bag containing half of those preps. The victor may only loot your non-reserved items (all limited items cannot be reserved).

This means that you'll always minimally be prepared to fight after even a full-loot. You'll still have your main weapon, a bunch of simple equipment (remember they're 40% as strong as the strongest stuff the veterans are using).

(g) CON loss represents an inconvenience (in the form of low CON) to long-lived players who take big risks. Make it so that deaths bring you closer to perma-death, but do not reduce your CON-based saves, max hp gain (if not yet level 51), healing rate, etc.

(h) Don't be super-anal and punish players for perceived failures to live up to cabal dogma etc. Skew towards reminding them gently first. Instead, be more punishing on bad behaviour that turns other people off the game (vicious trash-talking for example, or really poor sportsmanship, e.g. uninducting people for tiny slights).