Honestly wish they'd drop the pvp entirely. It's a tiny fraction of the player base and they're unbelievably toxic even for souls gamers. The Seamless Coop mod dev got death threats because it removes the possibility of pvp invaders and thus reduces their potential victim pool

There are mods that do similar things (randomizers and overhauls) and I think you can trade items already (by dropping them on the ground).

I think they could fix Elden Ring with a few changes:

• Make items and bosses randomized or semi-randomized in the overworld dungeons
• Make maybe 6 more starting classes with more starting gift options
• Cut out most of the overworld boss repeats
• Make the bosses slightly easier and more diverse by making their AI and movesets less aggressive and attack-spammy, especially in regards to making them more vulnerable for longer periods of time after their more powerful attacks -Make respeccing possible earlier but maybe slightly more resource intensive to do
• Have regions scale to your player character level in some way so exploring is more enjoyable because right now it's basically you could go to a difficult area but you'll get curb stomped and mostly do it to grab later-game items and early-game regions are easy to miss so coming back to them makes them too easy

I really, really like the idea of Elden Ring being an open-world RPG that rewards build experimentation and problem solving, using whatever tools you have available to you like crafting items, talisman/magic/ash of war combos/spirit ashes, etc. etc. But I find in actuality the bosses serve as hard gates to player creativity and I always end up giving in to use mimics tear, spellsword-style build, etc.