I like the idea of being able to "lock" things to protect them from bandits, but I'd rather it be like maybe a hiding spot that's completely safe, rather than a locked cabinet the raiders can just bust open. Maybe a hole dug into the basement floor or wall with something disguising it, or put in an out of the way room under a floorboard. But it wouldn't be able to hold all or even half of your average players stuff, maybe 25%. I wouldn't mind too much if it went up to like 75% once you've built and upgraded a few things and can stock up on whatever type of material you would need (and either a special rare-ish item as well or just a ton of "regular" materials to expand the hiding spot as the game progresses).
A lot of these are good ideas, but with one or 2 of your suggestions I'll elaborate, but otherwise I'm just going to pick the ideas I like and not pick the ones I don't without any explanation, then I'll give some ideas of my own.
1.) Survive not only with food, but on water as well
I like this, but maybe include water as another must-have resource like food and you can build rain catchers, storage tanks. Also lootable water purification tablets and eventually a water filter so that you don't have to use fuel to boil it.
4.) Stay warm with blankets! (in case unable to get material to burn or don't have a heater, blankets to help.
5.) This might be too far, but an add on purchase of playing against zombies. This is a very good scenario for surviving from zombies.
Ok, this one I'm honestly on the fence about. As much of a zombie fan-whore as I am, I agree, it's the perfect type of setting, style, and even the "2D" nature of it would work awesomely. That said, I almost think it disrespects the intentions of the developers as well as the "spirit" of 'This War of Mine' to have a "zombie mode". But that's just my opinion and TBH if 11bit put something like that out as DLC I would buy it.
7.) Animals (such as pets) have to feed them too. Able to protect house when scavenging.
Well... Say dogs are good defense against raiders but require food and (potentially) water. Same with cats
unless you have a rodent problem that is effecting your food supply and maybe damaging some wooden stuff as well as making the entire place a health hazard. Then you get a cat (buy one, find one, or steal one) or 2 and your rodent problem is no longer an issue (but they would still be poking around, keeping your cat(s) fed) and all the cat needs is a bit of water (potentially).
9.) More weapons! and tools. Also, long range stealth weapons. Ex: crossbow, option to build a silencer (special parts)
10.) Visit neighbors, form alliances, or enemies. All during the daytime though along with building or crafting.
13.) Soup up your defense around the house, possibly traps, or other alarms. Things that would help to protect you during the night.
14.) when we go out to scavenge, maybe have the ability to convince people to come stay with you after a period of time.
16.) Maybe the emotional ability to choose to do wrong without becoming depressed by a certain means.
The last one I really like. Maybe a kind of "hardness" or "desensitization" mechanism where as the game progresses and each character has to do certain things to survive or has suffered physical or psychological trauma from a wound or witnessing something particularly brutal this meter would go towards or away from desensitization by witnessing, performing, or suffering from certain acts. And maybe a lot of it would depend on each characters "character"
as well as their general strengths and weaknesses. For example, if you are "forced" to kill a ton of people while scavenging you get desensitized to doing it and become "hard" and unfeeling when it comes to witnessing and performing murders/ self defense homicides. And maybe you've been severely injured while out scavenging and the meter goes down, and you become more sensitive to witnessing even the most necessary violence and that could even effect the interactions between the 2 character examples.
As for what I'd really like to see... The occasional house-to-house fighting by the 2 factions of soldiers as one side or the other advances and get's pushed back. This would all happen during the daytime and everyone would have to hide in the basement to be safe while most of your improvements get heavily damaged or destroyed by the fighting (or if you feel like you can, try to defend your "home" which will pretty much always result in the deaths of every single character as whichever force was attacked will basically search every room in the building killing everything that moves until everyone is dead "game over"). The other option is an air strike that just levels the entire building with everyone in it, killing them all, "game over". Whichever they think is more terrifying and brutal (or it could be both and you get a 50/50 chance
). But keep it secret to give gung-ho Rambo style players a nasty surprise.