More smaller stories/arcs, less Big Bad and The World Is Ending Yet Again. Would like to see a story with Dean confined to a mental ward for real, with him seeing a monster stalking patients, keep us guessing is it really happening or all in his mind? (I do like a good crazy train story). Going through this last rewatch it struck me that Dean seems fairly afraid of truly ending up there, and I think it'd be interesting to see what happens when he really IS in there by himself. And I'd love the doc he saw in "Sam, Interrupted" to come back to chat. Stories like trxr4kids mentioned, just an average day in the life of the Winchesters that of course turns into totally their thing. I miss the pool hustling, the brothers being just brothers, patching each other up after a fight. Small things make me happy.
And throw us a bone now and then; the bottle from season 7 reappearing in season 11 was really the high point for me for the entire season; I was completely shocked by it showing up again, AND I didn't feel like it was trotted out just to say SEE WE REMEMBER THIS. I honestly would like to see the necklace of doom sometime in Sam's "memory box" when he's looking through it for something else, not have him pull it out or look at it longingly, just have it there and then pushed aside for what he really came for. I mean it had to end up somewhere, right?
Less dependence on The Angel Saving The Day or summoning Crowley as a way out. They used to be able to handle everything themselves, now it seems they're always turning to someone else to solve their problems. Of course, that probably goes back to The World Is Ending Yet Again...
I'd really like a story over the entire season with Crowley taking back hell, but done how Cas' angel civil war story was done in Season 6. You hear about a lot of stuff going down, but very little is directly shown (maybe an episode or three where Crowley needs the Winchesters' help but does it in a way that they think they're doing good/putting down a monster, and Crowley gets what he wants in the end). Then one episode like "The Man Who Would Be King" where we hear Crowley's side of it (it is one of my favorite episodes, partly because it's done so differently I suppose, I'm a sucker for "let me tell you my story"). Maybe Cas is helping him, the devil you know and all. Billie too, I would like to see more of her and she seems fond of Crowley.
But overall less of Cas/angel stories. I'm done with Angels In Cars Doing Nothing. If you're going to have Cas and Crowley around, have them actually DO something, and not just off in their own little world. I did not start watching this show because of them, I started watching it because there were two brothers out looking for their father in a world of nasty crap that they took care of to keep others safe.
Mostly, I want to not be treated as an idiot. We've all watched the show this far, we don't need anvils thrown at us all the time. We don't need conflict for the sake of conflict. We are fans of the show, do they really expect someone who's never seen it before to suddenly jump into season 12? We remember things, even if the writers don't (or choose to ignore it), so if you're not going to bother doing a little research, at least tell someone ELSE to check for you. Don't roofie me and call it romance. Let's try to be consistent, so much as this show can with all the character assassinations and monsters that seem to change from season to season (or as catrox14 put it better, "LOL canon destruction").
So I'm agreeing with all the folks above. Basically writers, we CARE about this show and these characters, SO DO RIGHT BY US.
Did this really happen?? Where was I that I missed this. How many times did it come up that Michael was the big brother and Lucifer was the younger?