In order of importance:
1) More Feel - 1000000% in agreement with
@Power Player -- PLEASE, for the love of god, increase feel/connectedness! Even if static weights have to rise a bit to do it, fine. People could do with some higher stock recoil weight anyways (which would also help boost comfort, in and of itself... imagine that!). Mainly though: with co-poly's finally starting to turn the corner on comfort, we don't need anywhere near as much of this muting "tech" nonsense as we did with the earlier-gen poly's (many of which felt more like string trimmer line than tennis string...). The good news is, OEMs are starting to clean up their layups, albeit slowly. Babolat has started to reverse course. Yonex is
slowly starting to reverse course. Wilson is
painfully slowly starting to reverse course. Head is still a victim of change for the sake of needless change (ex: Auxetic 2.0, mostly just removing feel if it's doing anything... hopefully, they'll get back on the path after Aux 2.0). But overall, we're getting there, hopefully.
2) Quality Control (QC) / Quality Assurance (QA) - No, I don't want a tennis racquet to have to cost $500, either. But don't tell me that you can't advertise an unstrung spec --
INCLUDING SWING WEIGHT -- and hit a way more reasonable standard of deviation. Of all OEMs, freaking
Prince has been doing it (swing weight included) for a few generations now... and largely nailing it. So don't tell me it can't be done. Absolute nonsense. I mean, we're still at the point where whole groups of silos should just come with a sign "Mandatory retailer matching service required". This has to change for the better.
3) Full Glossy Paint Jobs - An absolute no-brainer. Across the board. Really, nothing more needs to be said here. You all saw the poll from a few months ago. Preferred unanimously by all ages, all backgrounds. There's simply no debate. All of you OEMs, just make it happen. Period. (Or yes, for the purists, you can make it "satin", or "dimpled", or whatever finish travels fastest through the air, but the point is - there needs to be higher-quality top-coating done on all frames, ala yesteryear)
Those are my big three for now. I would presume most would agree?