Just a couple of thoughts on aditional things that monsters could drop when they die.
Blue hearts: consumeable, Heals some life and cures status ailments.
Health Burst: Pickup heals 2/3's as much as a comprable health capsule (so 2, 4, and 8 health instead of 3, 6, and 12), but heals everyone in the party, not just the one who uses it.
Remedy Burst: Pickup cures all party members of status ailments.
Alternate Vitapods.
An alternate vitapod would be a vitapod that provides an aditional non-health bonus at the cost of providing less hp. For example if the game would drop a 10 hp vitapod it may instead drop a 7 hp vitpod with a CTR bonus. The different bonus types will have diferent symbols on them (basic vitapods will still have the heart on them). Vitapod auto switching will need some work, likely a simple toggle to say go for max health or keep the same bonus (so you wont drop a damage bonus vitapod for a pod with more health on it), and maybe one to automaticly switch for the next non-strictly inferior pod you walk over (strictly inferior means less health and same bonus).
Not sure if hp reductions for bonuses should be % based or a static number.
Example Alternates (ordered from those that would have the smallest health penalty to the largest health penaly)
See enemy health bars: Symbol an eye
Move speed: Symbol boot with a wing
Status resist bonus: symbol a sheild with the status symbol in it.
Defence bonus: symbol a sheild color coded based on what type of damage it is a bonus for (red=normal, green=elemental, yellow=peirce, purple=shadow)
ASI*: symbol several blue bullets in a row
CTR*: symbol a green explosion
Damage*: symbol a red sword
*in order to make all vitapods usefull to everyone, damage, ctr, and asi are for all weapon types, dispite the symbol referencing a single weapon type.
Blue Hearts: Perhaps. But would have to be balanced out a bit. Poison, anyone? Fire, anyone?
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Health Burst: No. Redundant because the hearts are instanced for each player i.e. just because you pickup a heart on your screen, it doesn't mean that another player can't pick up that same heart. The only use I can think of this is for people who always forget to tell people there are hearts here. Other than that, no reason for these things to exist.
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Alt Vitapods: Yes. The bonuses would have to be LOW to not be considered OP. And since there is already a huge arguement over being able to see an enemies health bar, maybe leave that one out. The Symbols can be in the top-right of the Vitapod window, as well as on the actual Vitapod. Also instead of how all complicated switching and stuff, how about this? Alt' Vitapods work like normal Vitapods, except that they don't automatically switch out. Whenever a Vitapod would normally drop there is a chance for it to have any one of the above Bonuses (except the eye). Any vitapod with a bonus automatically has x taken from its would-be total, no matter what the bonus is. They do not spawn in T1, due to the Vita's there being too low-level.