This is a short suggestion for a developer who feels comfortable meddling with GUI and serialization.
I'd love to see City of Heroes get a text-only inventory system. The idea is simple on its face, but possibly difficult to execute. A text-only inventory is a list of items that exist only as text. They don't have icons, they can't be dropped on the ground in the "real" world, they exist purely as items in a container. However, these items have the following characteristics:
Players can trade them
The items can respond to certain player verbs (in text games this is determined by the item)
There might be some way to "examine" or "look" at the item to see more text
(Potentially) The ability for a text object to be a container for another text object
So, why add this?
My answer is that text-based RPG games just naturally have this. They don't think about it as something extra because the game is already text-based. So, a glass rose, a stale cigar, a bucket of mackerel can all exist as text objects to add immersion in those games. Why not include them in a visual game as well?
The argument against this of course is that players can already "fake" having items with text. However, this is true in text based games as well. Players can usually "fake" whatever they want. The idea isn't that the items replace being able to emote. It's bringing an extra layer to the storytelling. Now you don't just go to the donut shop; there are actually donuts there, and you can share them with your team.
There are ways to take this further. You could have different "colors" of text based items. Perhaps blue items are "real" in the sense of being generated by the game world, "yellow" items are generated spontaneously by players, and "purple" items can only be generated by GMs during special events. But I won't go into all that. I'd love for some talented developer to take a crack at this. I think with the RPG community CoX has it would turn a corner and bring a lot of the advantages text games enjoy, with relatively low level investment in assets other than code time and (if the team desired) world building.