Okay so I'm a big fan of MMORPGs, and since the mod has lots of (MMO)RPG elements, it's very easy to get some inspiration, which could fit into the mod.
My idea: add a MMORPG-like crafting system.
NOTE: There should be a way to disable this feature and get back the normal crafting system, just like you can disable modifiers atm.
Now most of you are going to think "But this is Minecraft, you have to craft EVERYTHING, it even has 'craft' in its name". And yes, you are right, but let me explain:
What I really enjoy about MMORPGs is crafting. Mining the resources on the overworld and then use them to craft good items. Minecraft has that too, but a bit different. What I don't like about Minecraft (or the Mod), is that I (and maybe some of you guys agree) often don't feel like making good gear. I craft/smith it for PvP, yes, but when I kill NPCs, I don't use good gear. Why? Because I don't feel like it's worth the materials. The weapons and especially the armor break so quickly, that it's a waste to use it for mobs.
So, my suggestion: introduce a crafting system, like in MMORPGs.
How it should work: Add 3 (maybe more, you can leave suggestions) disciplines: Cook, Weapon Smith and Armor Smith. You can open a crafting menu in which you see all the recipes you've unlocked.
Every discipline starts at Tier 1, where you basically can only craft standard stuff. The more you craft, the more Crafting-XP you get. Once you've reached a certain amount of XP, you get to Tier 2, where you can craft more and better stuff.
Another new feature would be new mob drops. In Guild Wars 2 for example (which most of my inspiration comes from), certain mobs drop certain items, which you can use for crafting. For example: Underwater enemies drop scales, poisonous enemies (like spiders) drop venom sacs, etc. Those materials also have own tiers, the higher the enemy's level is, the higher is the tier of the material. For example: Level 5 spiders drop tier 1 venom sacs ("Tiny Venom Sac"), Level 80 (max Level) spiders drop tier 5 venom sacs ("Potent Venom Sac") or rarely even tier 6 venom sacs ("Powerful Venom Sac"). If you are tier 5 with weapon smith, you can use tier 5 materials. Tier 5 materials give better stats than tier 1 materials, sounds logical.
Now let's use Wargs as an example: If you kill a Warg, there's a chance to get a tier 1 material (let's say they drop an item called "tiny fang"). Now let's say you kill a Mordor Warg. If you have 0 Gondor alignment, they can only drop tier 1 fangs. The more alignment you get, the higher the tier of the possible drop is. My suggestion is that it goes in steps of 250 alignment, so: 0-250 -> tier 1, 250-500 -> tier 2, 500-750 -> tier 3, 750-1000 -> tier 4. You can unlock tier 5 by pledging to a faction and having +2000 alignment, and tier 6 by having +5000 alignment with the faction you pledged.
Now let me explain the 3 disciplines.
Cook: At the beginning you can only do basic stuff, like cooking stuff in the oven. At tier 2 you unlock various dishes you can cook (for example: stews, cakes, etc.). With every tier you unlock new dishes, which give you buff (higher tier = better buff). You also unlock new food items, which you can buy from farmer NPCs (like hobbit farmers), of course only if you have reached the right tier. (Example: You unlock cinnamon and vanilla at tier 3, as soon as you've reached tier 3, hobbit farmers offer cinnamon and vanilla).
Weapon Smith: Now the real stuff begins. I already mentioned that right now weapons break too fast and it's not worth making good weapons. My suggestion: make weapons more expensive, but also more viable. That means: more durability and you can intentionally put a crafting modifier on your weapon, by crafting smith scrolls. The modifier you get depends on the material you use. For example: you can craft a Keen smith scroll with a tier 2 fang and a blank smith scroll (a new item that is craftable). For crafting a weapon, you need 2 parts of the weapon. For example: If you want to craft a sword, you first need to craft a sword blade and a sword hilt, which you can combine to craft a sword. If you craft a regular sword, you have the chance to get a random modifier, just like it is right now, it can be a good or a bad modifier. But if you combine those sword components with a smith scroll, you automatically get the upgraded sword. The tiers: At tier 1, you can only craft wooden and stone tools and weapons (the weaponsmith also crafts the tools). At tier 2 you unlock bronze stuff, tier 3 is iron stuff, tier 4 is steel (new item, iron and coal in an alloy forge), tier 5 is silver-steel (new item, steel and silver in an alloy forge) and mithril (at this point I wanted to give players an alternative to mithril stuff, because mithril is very limited and hard to find, of course mithril stuff is better than silver-steel stuff, but you are able to craft both at tier 5). Tier 6 is special, because it's the "legendary" tier. At this tear, you use Gondolinian-Steel and craft Gondolinian Gear (I'm not sure about that one, if you guys have any other suggestion, please leave them down below, it should be something from the lore). Legendary gear *does not* break, it has infinite durability (or the durability is so high that it doesn't matter anymore, like 1.000.000 uses). Also, it is expensive as hell (in Guild Wars 2, crafting a Legendary weapon costs you about 1000-2000 gold. If you start the game and play till the final story mission, you usually have ~5-10 gold, so yeah, you see what I mean). Legendary Gear should be something you have to grind *a lot* for, so it shouldn't break at all. Of course, legendary gear will be forbidden on many servers because of its strength (at least for PvP), but as I said, it should be something you grind a lot for, days, maybe even months. In Guild Wars, you need to craft tons of items and weapons, just to create one legendary weapon. For example: you craft a sword, which you need to combine with many other expensive items to get another sword, which you again combine with expensive items to get another sword, and this goes on, until you finally can craft the legendary weapon.
Armor Smith: Okay so the Armor smith is basically the same as the weapon smith. Same tiers, same materials, just other scrolls (you craft the armor-buff scrolls ofc).
Now let's get to faction specific crafting:
You might wonder how you get the faction gear with that new crafting system. The answer is easy: faction specific crafting. You can learn Gondorian, Elven, Dwarven, etc. crafting by talking to a smith of the faction. For example: You talk to a Gondorian Blacksmith and (as long as you have positive alignment with Gondor) you are able to learn Gondorian Crafting. You unlock all the recipes for Gondorian Stuff. You might also add kinds of 'epic faction gear', such as Gondor Citadel Guard Armor, which has a nice bonus or is just stronger than regular Gondorian Armor, or something like that (for the evil players it would be Morgul Armor).
I wrote all of this from a good-faction perspective, but evil players are of course also able to get all this stuff. The recipes, for which you needed Warg drops would be replaced with NPC-Horse drops (yes, NPC-horses, because otherwise it would be way too easy to farm them). There would be 2 recipes for 'Keen Smith Scrolls': one uses the Warg drop and the other uses the horse drop, you get the idea.
If you want to read through the crafting/legendary weapon system from Guild Wars 2, these links might be useful:
GW2 Legendary Weapon guide (so you see how much time and effort you must spend in it)
GW2 Basic Crafting Guide (Video)
Thank you all for reading through this long post, it took me a while to write it, and I hope I explained everything understandable. If not, feel free to ask me.
I know this would change the whole concept of the mod, everything Minecraft is based on (which is crafting lol), but I think this would make the mod a lot cooler than it already is.
If you have any suggestion, leave them below.
I hope this gets some attention lol
-Luk