I also would like polygon deformation to become more natural.
If the player sits or leans against a wall, the polygons should bend and compress against the weight. It's not as big of a problem as clipping for me but it is noticeable.
This is mine, unfortunately i think it is going to require us to move away from how we rig characters right now. For example, characters that use nvidia flex soft body physics system dont actually have bones. Instead animation is driven through volumes. This goes way beyond the simple jiggle physics we have seen before. Soft body is the future but i don't think the work flow is ready yet. Needs a tech breakthrough.
Other than the proliferation of soft body physics i would like to see liquid physics and grass rendering take a big leap forward.
Tired of light sources that don't cast shadows.
Next gen will be the first gen where engines will be able to have fully dynamic global illumination with the same iq and performance as baked lighting.
Could have been this gen but after the ps4s specs turned out so weak, engine devs like epic decided to cut their GI plans and went back to baked lighting.
There is a lot of fake GI in use this gen though (Enlighten, Epic's light propagation, etc).
In the future lighting will be set and forget with no need to bake or precompute (like how cryengine works right now).