Ambitious JRPG/ARPG Hybrid: Input, please! Thread

TL;DR: Skip to the bottom and read the bold.

I know what you're thinking. "This guy has an ambitious project and has nothing but an idea." Nope. I have an idea, a will, a ridiculous drive and something to show for it. I'm new to this indie thing so please be gentle. The only convention I've been to is GDC (twice) but so far have kind of stayed a little apart from the indie scene. I love you guys but it's complicated. This post has two goals. At the same time I want to introduce this game to the wider world outside my friends, I kinda also want to ask for help. I love feedback and thinking out loud -- and I need help with the actual development. Maybe I can drum up interest at this point in its development and start a small community. (Yeah, right.)

In my spare time for the past few years I've been working on a project in my secret hideout that mixes two of my favorite things: Action RPGs and JRPGs of yore, such as Final Fantasy 6. (I like FPSes too but I definitely don't want to code that). It's as if Diablo III 2 and Final Fantasy had some ugly ass babies. The project has no official name, just a code name: the Chain Project. Final Fantasy 6, the game I'm sort of modeling, is pretty simple gameplay-wise. For a long time I'd been trying to come up with a way to bring that into the modern era but thought it nearly impossible. The nostalgic part of me saw Final Fantasy 6 as some kind of strategic awesomeness but really, you took just one action every 1-3 seconds on average and the basic gameplay changed little over the next 40 hours.

And then I had a eureka moment. I had been doing this for several weeks already but it wasn't until a few days ago that the concept really became clear to me. I realized the potential to take this JRPG formula and smash it with the ARPG formula and potentially come up with a genre-bending game. This project is rather dear to my heart because it's part of a universe (of my own creation) that's well over 10 years old, although this entry in it only began near to Starcraft 2's release (long story).

In any case, the game's at a point where it's fairly close to being demoed to friends of mine. I'll discuss the only thing keeping it out of the public eye later. As you can guess, items in the game adhere to the ARPG genre. There are 6 rarities: Cracked, Normal, Glowing, Bright, Sparkling and Perfect. So far, I have about 40 different affixes (item properties), maybe a dozen of which are implemented, most of which were coded in a frenzy this past Sunday (so much for Mother's Day, eh?). I don't have plans right now for randomized levels but I do have plans for a very story-driven experience. You can probably see where my problems start. (Hint: I'm the only person working on this right now.)

This is where anyone reading this comes in. Itemization is a complicated topic. I thank Blizzard for being so open with their development. Following WoW, Starcraft and Diablo has given tons of insight into the game design process. I've been studying what I can of game design (while being an independent) for a long time now and have come to some conclusions as far as ARPGs are concerned:
1) Players often don't know what's best for them. They want the most overpowered things, even if it ruins the game.
2) Tying into #1, a game is a set of rules that can and, more importantly, things that cannot be done. That cannot is important.
3) Tying into #2, something powerful has to have restrictions. One of the staples of ARPGs is being stupid overpowered. The good ARPGs find a delicate balance to this.
4) And finally, people play ARPGs not for the item hunt but to build a character. They want to be stupid overpowered but they really do want to work for it. If the game had no restrictions to overcome (people love overcoming things), it'd get boring pretty fast.

Here are a few affixes straight from the data file feeding the game (the game is ridiculously moddable). Mind you, this is really XML but I can't paste XML into this box.
[Affix Type="FireDot"
Position="Suffix"
Text="of the Burning Blaze"
Role="PhysDamage,MagDamage"
MinimumRarity="Sparkling"
Category="ElementalBoost"
Description="Fire-based attacks do 20\% additional Fire damage over 4 seconds." /]

[Affix Type="HolyShieldHeal"
Position="Suffix"
Text="of the Holy Shield"
Role="Healing"
MinimumRarity="Sparkling"
Category="ElementalBoost"
Description="Overhealing becomes a shield that prevents damage until it runs out." /]

[Affix Type="Preemptive"
Position="Suffix"
Text="of the Prepared"
Description="You can attack as soon as a battle starts."/]

These are three affixes that can drastically change how you would expect to play a JRPG. Remember how simple the early JRPGs were in combat (and forget how that changed as the genre went on). Now throw in random items that can completely change up how you fight and tailor the experience to how you want it. I want more of these. The gameplay potential is extremely enticing to me.

Two things:
1) I'm looking for development help. Enquire within. Engine C++, tools C#. 2D OpenGL and FMOD.
2) Don't want to help with development but love ARPGs or JRPGs and want to contribute to the cause? Offer up some item properties! I don't care how stupid overpowered. There is one affix in here that makes the character immune to physical damage. It doesn't get much more stupid than that (aside from making you immune to all damage, period).