There are so many , and only mind about them when a game missing these.

Borderless window mode pretty much a must have in every game
Autosaves nobody likes to lose progress
Video skip as others mentioned
Easy multiplayer I dont miss the testing of old lan/lan over net crap connections
same for audio , who wants to test which audio engine works or not..
Clearly readable texts
Logs for missions etc.
In game map

Working route tracing for units , so they dont bump into eachother all the time

I feature I've come to appreciate is to seamlessly switch between gamepad and M+K, with all the prompts also being changed accordingly.

Also what the others said:
- let me remap controls
- let me save when I want (within reason)
- let me skip dialogue and cut-scenes
- let me pause anywhere, in cut-scenes too
- let me turn on and off individual visual "features", don't give me just a "quality" slider

And a feature I miss from ye olde days: In RPGs let me stick notes to the map. Why has this become out of fashion?

Most of them are goto marker do X, return to origin. No need for notes. Used to make notes, draw maps etc. For games, not for many years though. That gold box mapper program is available, might be useful for mapping and note taking.

Yep, might have been more than 30 years ago! It would be nice to have that functionality, most you get is different coloured pins. If I felt inclined I would screen dump the map and annotate a printed copy. I notice for some games there are interactive online maps, oblivion, ac odyssey for instance. Maybe that’s the way forward, extract map and create and interactive web page from it. Interesting thought, could be a tool idea in there…

Accessibility:

* Difficulty settings.
* Fully remappable controls.
* Things have visual AND audio cues, that aren't too subtle.
* Disable vibration if using a controller.
* Common awful graphics things (like full screen shake, full screen flash, head bob, etc)
* Auto-pass QTEs (or better yet, designed without them)
* Nothing "missable" (unless the game is short and designed for replay).

Transparency:

* Clear in-game reference for what things do.
* In-game icons references, etc.
* Distinction between mechanical text and flavor text.
* "Tutorial" is short, repeatable, segmented, and doesn't break progress in main game.
* In-game maps, "story so far", NPC and keyword lists, etc. (Full saved dialogs are a bonus!)
* Real menus that are separate from "in game". Black & White and numerous other games have demonstrated that trying to go "menuless" is going to be a failure and just detrimental to the game. Lots of cRPGs (NWN is super guilty of this) have NPCs get controlled by "dialog" with them rather than a more sensible means. In builder games where building a new building unlocks a new global feature, add it to the global menus. I shouldn't need to (Endzone game to mind here; the game otherwise has a lot of GREAT QOL features) click on the weather station to change the weather control options. That should be a global feature now that I have it. (Per-building toggles make more sense.)

Others:

* Clear text. Even if you're doing a pixel art, low-fi game, do good text.
* Robust resolution options. Borderless window. Resizable windows. Arbitrary sizes. (Yes, it can make UI coding way harder, but I hate full-screen gaming at my monitor's 3440x1440, and most games only let me go Windowed mode to pre-set sizes, so I'm usually gamihng at 1080... I'd like to go full-screen vertical [with appropriate horizontal to go with it], but, if it's an option, it's often not going to work because it's not borderless.
* Respectful of the player and time. No extreme low drop rates/encounter rates for certain things. Full respeccing available. Reasonable save options. If a long segment is coming up, pre-warn the player. UX "conveniences" to save time (I swear, I spend as much time in the menus of Nioh/Nioh2 as I do playing... I hate that game, but the gameplay [when you can get to it] is so good. But it does EVERYTHING ELSE wrong.).
* PAUSING. GODDAMNED PAUSING. EVEN IN MULTIPLAYER!

[For once, I am echoing a few of what the Orkhepaj said... though I disagree with a few of those too].

EDIT:
I can understand when low budget/indies miss some of these, but some (pausing, remapping controls, clear text) are inexcusable to have absent.

This reminds me that missions in open world games should always be replayable. I am to this day extremely frustrated that Saints Row 4 does not allow the player to play missions again, because many missions were extremely unique relative to the core game (such as the "Saints of Rage" beat em up part).

YES! 100%. I forgot this. Escape shouldn't ever skip a cutscene - it should pause and bring up the pause menu.

I also want multiple save slots. Don't stop me from experimenting by only letting me have one save. I don't have the time or inclination to replay games to make different decisions.

Assuming you've got two hands, you're expected to play with one hand on the mouse and the second hand on the keyboard. That's why most default control schemes are clustered around the left portion of the keyboard and e.g. right ctrl is no longer used as a default key in most normal control schemes (or reverse for lefties).

Regarding accessibility for people with hand tremors or other conditions, while this might sound harsh, you can't design every game with accessibility needs for everyone in mind. There has to be a balance - so things like subtitles make sense, but equally you have to accept that some people won't be able to enjoy the hobby in the same way - for example, some people don't have use of all their limbs, some people are blind etc. If you design to the lowest common denominator, you're killing creativity (and to be honest, a lot of enjoyment).

For single player, you could put in things like optional autoaim etc to offset some precision losses, but abandoning precision mouse control would be a massive retrograde step for gaming as a whole.

WASD is rage-inducing to me. I mouse left, and use numpad for most other things. Or arrow keys+home/end block. Even among games that have fixed binding, WASD shouldn't be your sole "arrows" there.

I had tried a custom keyboard once (Ideazon Fang), but it had plenty of shortcomings that I returned to numpad. (I recently bought a new mouse. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a true ambi mouse? A lot of them are labeled "ambi" based on shape alone, but still have side buttons only on their left side (AKA for righties).

Which leads me to another one: It'd be nice of games supported more than LMB, RMB, MMB, and scrollup-down, for those of us who do have more. I wish I could do without the "mouse software", but I need it since a lot of even newer games don't recognose MB4, MB5, MB6, MB7 to be mapped. (And I've seen plenty of people upset about scroll-left, scroll-right not being supported; I don't have that in my device but could imagine I'd like it.)

Yeah - I wasn't defending just WASD - all keys should be rebindable. What they ought to do is also have a default "Left Handed" layout - i.e. mouse in left hand, then whatever the most common left-handed equivalent to WASD is. All totally rebindable - there's no excuse for fixed control sets.

This really made me think of the latter day 3D Sonic games, where you'd always have some kind of companion character who (bluntly put) is a toddler surrogate who not only has an annoying voice, but also will never shut up, regardless if you accidentally touched a tutorial sphere or not.

One thing I expect from modern games but which I sadly don't get enough of the time is the ability to change which shoulder I'm look over in third person games. Having to go around a corner on the left of the screen while your viewpoint is locked to the right of your character just feels so clunky and like I'm putting myself at a big disadvantage for no good reason. Let me swap shoulder on the fly instead of forcing me to round the corner with my character blocking most of that half of the screen!

Also, I've been playing Shadow Warrior 2013 recently and I really dislike having to input button combinations to perform certain moves. D-D-RMB to use my heal spell or W-W-LMB to use the magic stab attack is just annoyingly clunky. Only having one button to go into the last upgrade menu you looked at instead of having three different buttons for the three different upgrade menus is also annoying. There's like a hundred buttons on my keyboard, use more of them instead of doing this nonsense!

It’s a wonder anyone is able to do anything nowadays. Perhaps each game should ship with a robot to play it for you?

I know what you mean. I've got a medical condition which means that I'm not allowed to go scuba diving. This sucks, because I'd quite like to dive in the tropics and it's not my fault that I cannot. Decrying precision mouse control because some people have accessibility issues is very much like me saying "I can't go diving, so nobody else should be allowed to either because it's not accessible to me".

Great thread and I agree with all of you. A few additions to the already said:
-Stop marketing unreal features/dates
-No DRM/telemetry. Please respect me as a client
-Offline installers
-Smart downloads: localization stuff (voice), Hi resolution textures.
-Stop DLCs (chopped games)
-Stop loot boxes/grinding practices
-Stop countless versions of the same game (The other day my curiosity on Ubisoft's store died instantly when I saw gold, director's, platinum, final editions...)
-More co-op games please! (second player)
-Optimized resources (hdd, sys reqs, bandwidth)
-Focus on Immersion: Localization, voices, remap controls, skip/fforward/rewind... all of them are welcomed
-Manuals/Tutorials/How2s: Please be inventive... not just throw a pdf to me (if I am lucky)
-Multi platform
-Cross play
-Advanced configuration menu (A nerds menu: a real black hole where any obscure/rare setting you can think of fits)
-Advanced subtitles menu (font, size, position)

Is it gonna be expensive & difficult? Yes, probably sure. But this can be diluted in several key players:
-All those standard game engines could take care/responsibility on some points
-Other tasks could be even attended by the fans (e.g translate subtitles) -if and only if- the game/developers would use/implement open standards...
-And finally, when unavoidable, they will simply fall into the final asking price...