Offer suggestions, discuss them, and try to be reasonable.

What's been suggested: (Updated 01/14/09)

-Harder bosses/puzzles*
-Fawful cameo*
-Paper Mario Recipe system**
-Combo moves (a la "Bro Attacks")*
-Field character switching (Mario Bros. <=> Bowser)**
-HUB World**
-Geno/Mallow Cameo
-Cake
-Special Worlds
-Recipe System**
-Field Equipment (Equipment used for dungeon/puzzle solving)*
-Hard Mode*
-More Sidequests**
-Better Hero diversity**
-More playable characters
-Boss Battle Mode*
-Luigi Solo Battles
-Trouble Center
-Fewer Battles
-Pit of 200 Trials
-Scene/Dialogue skipping
-Overworld jumping
-New Battle Transition
-Puzzles involving the Mouse**
-Mini Game Cabin
-Action commands for defending*
-Smash Attacks?
-Gold Coins**
-Portable Warp Pipe System


*Means it might make it in
**Means it has a good chance of making it in
Chances of getting in are subject to change

Fawful. And i want it to be harder than Seven Sages. And i want some interesting "Duo moves", like the Bro. Attacks in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. And i want it now.

We're going to experiment with Combo attacks eventually, so we'll see about that. Also, by harder, do you just mean bosses/enemies being stronger? Or more puzzles and other gameplay stuff like that?

Both.

Hmm... is it good enough for the extra stuff (extra bosses, worlds, etc) to be hard and leave the main game easy enough for most people to play? That's kind of what we did in SS.

Sounds good. But make the main story a little harder than Seven Sages, would you? The only hard thing about it was pretty much the final boss. To me at least.

i think that it is primarily the lategame bosses who need the increases; early game should still ease in newbies.

also, i think that it would be neat to switch through main party characters in the overworld in order to cross various obstacles, such as with marios jump or bowsers ability to smash through stuff, or solve various puzzles. or, as seen below, initiate combat with different character specific attacks.

also the ability for either party to initiate combat in the overworld with an attack, replacing the preemptive strike which i never figured out. for example, mario could jump on enemies. i dont know if the engine supports this feature though.

We'll probably use scripts for enemies noticing you like in Paper Mario, and I'm working on a new Pre-Emptive strike system that uses the mouse.

Yes, Bowser will have his own field abilities, and there should be extra abilities you gain that aren't hammer/jump.

Well, Mario RPG games are never "hard". They may have difficult extra things to balance it though. I agree that the battles weren't really hard, and I would like to raise the difficulty a lot, but everyday we get messages about Seven Sages bosses being too hard and asking for tips on how to beat them. So, it's just a balancing act I guess.

Is field character-switching something that can be done in any place as long as you have at least 2 people (within reason... some areas might not be logical I would suppose, depending on what it is), or is it still plot/scripted/area-specific, since it would be easier and more fluid for gameplay imo to implement more 'interestingness' (puzzles, obstacles, etc) into the main field with ability to switch anywhere.

(My prior post was posted from my phone, so I didn't capitalize )

As to difficulty, maybe make things a bit more leveled? (can't push it below a minimum asymptote however, so that you can't go through at insanely low levels, and the amount it gets easier by drops off exponentially the lower your level is, and it simply stops getting easier after a certain point (this point increasing linearly with the game's difficulty increasing at the same rate))