My idea is that you make skills the same as feps in a similar way if you spend say 200 to up one, to up any of the others its 260 say making it 30% more lp to up another skill but different from feps you will be unable to level up all of the skills together- easily this will make village roles much more necessary for making better quality goods but still making it possible for loners to be a "jack of all trades" but this would make people actually WANT to be apart of a village. People will only effectively be able to level up a couple skills before "diminishing skills" come into play, making village roles more prominent. Like in a real community you have doctors and farmers, a doctor shouldnt be able to do their role as well as a farmer and vice versa.
Another idea is add an age to animals in captivity that after a period of time they will not be breedable but will not die unless slaughtered so people that are not online for a long time wont find all their livestock dead and that certain animals thrive better in the type of area they are found in. To make trade happen, different animals should not gain quality out of their natural type of "element" they are found in and their born are 5% degraded from what the mother and father were, so after 20 born they will be weaker and with a low quality and eventually unbreedable making Bringing sheep far from where they are found to an area where they dont normally belong would indeed give worthwhile feps making people want them but also not being able to upkeep them forever makes trade happen! perhaps a icon by the minimap showing the type of condition you are in *be it hot or cold dry or humid" will be the factors for which different animals will be able to gain quality in.
another idea is to make seedbags 3 times larger and certain plants will not produce seeds unless they are in the right kind of conditions, Make wheat available everywhere though because of their many uses but perhaps the village wants tobacco but it wont grow in their region, they will travel to another village and request it for something else like i was saying previously right now every single village has everything they'll ever need so they arent needing to trade.
I spent alot of time and thought to these ideas please give me the same to yours.