1. Do away with the action-packed button mashing that is DA2 combat. I play on PC and after the first few levels I rarely use skills unless it's a boss because I'm too busy spamming 'R' since I end up killing most of the trash wave mobs with one hit. Not to mention my immense irritation with standing around twiddling my thumbs waiting for said trash mobs to teleport from nowhere when I kill the wave before them too quickly for the game to keep up.
2. Keep the resource gathering from DA2, but I'm not overly fond of having to run back home every time I want to craft something.
3. If there's any justice in this world the third-person narrative and voiced protagonist will be killed with fire, the next game will have a point to it for the first half, and every mage in the vicinity won't become a blood mage/abomination at the slightest provocation. A lot less railroading me into the same ending regardless of choice would be nice as well.
4. More development time and less rush to take money from people. I'd rather wait five years for the next game than get something with copy-pasted rooms and caves everywhere I go.
5. Side-quests, while potentially interesting, should not be the majority of the game. When 3/4's of your game time is spent on errands for people you may not care a thing about for the sake of extending your run-through, there's a problem.
6. Quick load times. I was pleasantly surprised when I didn't have time to walk downstairs for a drink while waiting for the next area to load. Keep that.
7. Origins. Having a set character may be great for your tale, which by the way was about as transparent as a window once you got past the completely unrelated side quests that were Act 1, but it sucks when it comes to replayability. I've finished three run-throughs, one as each class, and the only differences are the few occasions that my DA:O import had a different decision and those references were few and far between. I didn't even listen to the cutscenes this last time because I already knew what they would say with the exception of companion conversations. If having different origins to choose from is impossible, at the very least you could make the decisions we do get to make matter. If I choose to do option A, I shouldn't be railroaded into also doing option B simply because the world goes mad. That's not morally grey, it's making the game linear.
8. I felt like I got to know the companions in DA:O better, but the companion quests in DA2 felt like more thought had been put into them. Combining those and having the option to talk to them outside of camp or the bar would be the best of both worlds. Am I asking for too much? Probably, but the companions are the best part of Bioware games for me. And speaking of companions, could you not at least
try to make any cameo appearances look like the original character? Alistair looks like he got stung by a bee, had a severe allergic reaction, and still hasn't recovered from the swelling.
9. The return of the isometric view. Yes I know, you didn't want to cut the tops off the rooms. I'd rather look at unfinished walls than be pushed up in a corner and unable to see anything because of camera constraints.
And a note to marketing, "fight like a spartan" "think like a general" does not apply to DA2. Please come up with a better catch phrase for the next game.