I saw a Virtual Reality RP that was literally a Virtual Reality-based thing as in there were no limits on what your powers/classes/weapons/etc were. You just had your specific traits and custom made "abilities" which let you basically make yourself from some kind of gun totting outlaw to some super high powered swordsman or even a half-dragon robot engineer. So that could be an idea instead of restricting people to this and that?

As for a story, maybe the reality itself could be a video game that was made for a specific reason and the world itself is having issues that only can be fixed in game (kinda like Digimon somehow?) 

Just some ideas, but that's my way of saying I got interest haha