If I had my way, I would alter lima in the following ways
1) Make some sort of leveling daemon that handles the classic 2.4.5 xp rates, level range, titles etc. Somewhere in the admtool there should be level ranges, titles, xp requiremensts that can be modulated. Heck, even the classic "buy up" the next level if your 15% or whatever and have gold/ This was an area where the lima team just felt if you didnt want a skill only system or didnt know how to code a leveling system your basically thrown to the wolves.
2) Drop alot of the function names from classic 2.4.5 and call it set_brief instead of set_short. There is no need to alter things for sake of idealism. I dont know if Dead Souls fixed the mixed caps issue where you can use either, but personally, mix caps is harder to read (Set_Long). Why do lib coders insist on changing things that work fine (end rant)
3) Reverse much of the "boxed" design decisions, like NO ADD_ACTIONS. I agree verbs are the way to go but there are some areas where a rare single command, an example is "deposit" to/from banks probably is better off using an add-action. Moreover, multilingual muds where english is not the default should have the option to define outside the verb paradigm. Verbs should be a guidline, not a straight jacket.
4) Adjust the news system to use bboards like dead souls. Easy and clean syntax, but I would try to code a phpbb3 web to in game bboard.o's to modern social media. At this point intermud is a not the make or break point of any mudlib. Real innovations and expansion to twitter. vent, facebooks, phpbb3 is the way to go.
5) Fix the bodyslots.h so dual wield it works with the other options other than just "hitpoints"
6) Import the Dead Souls parser adjustments, if Crat is agreeable, so the weirdo lima syntax get third sword of second table to just get sword 3 from table 2. The parser syntax is not that player friendly. Major props to Wodan/Crat for the driver adjustments to overcome another annoyance.
7) adjust the party system to somewhat closer to boxed 2.4.5 stock. Rollback some function names to their classic names. Again do away with wierdness.

Stats..... whats wrong with the classic? Str, Dex,Con, Char, Wis, Int. Even Coffeemud uses these stats. No need for fancy terms like agility etc to replace what is well established in the mud world and beyond.
9) Flags are somehow better than "set_properties"? or set_perm flags.h is just really another way of idealizing and not changing anything real
10) create a pkiller daemon and corresponding options in the admintool to yes, no, range level, bounty system, etc.
11) Adjust MSSP, MCP and the goodies that DS modernized in their lib. Part of me wants to just use their earliest beta .08
lima and adjust from there using Nightmare 3.3.1 some function.
Finally, on Dragonfire, we are making BATMUD like java client as an option.