APPLICATIONS; I honestly think they're good as they are, and if we're keeping the day ratio the same, I feel like changing it up would just end in confusion. We're all used to this system of cycles. I do think that closing apps for the duration of the transition would be beneficial to everyone who is already in the game and adjusting.
ACTIVITY CHECK; While I've gotten used to the way AC runs here, I've always found it a little strange that the length of 8 comments minimum from your character in a thread on a post your character made was a little steep. If you post, and you don't just let comments sit unreplied to, I think a post should count as one of the three forms regardless of the length of a single thread being 8+ from your character. Otherwise, I'm not really partial to any particular sort of change, aside from avoiding making it any steeper. I do think summarizing what the character's been up to is a little bit redundant but it's not that big a deal. SO TL;DR... Not necessarily easying AC up, just giving some more options, such as:
form one: ( POST ) form two: ( # COMMENTS ) form three : ( # COMMENTS ).
Or offering the chance to offer more than/less than three forms and have a TOTAL post/comment count ratio to meet, i.e... Character A posts once in a month but instead of having a few threads on other posts adding up to 8+ comments from them, they had one thread on another post that adds up to 20+ comments from them - if they had that much going on, they're clearly active even if they were too busy to comment around. Removing the "only one thread/entry" rule would also be beneficial, I think.
HMD; Echoing previous opinions - I think having HMD be separate from AC, as well as member locked, would provide much more chance and incentive for people to use the HMD function. I think people are so caught up making sure they have AC filled out right and all caught up that they forget to comment to other people with concrit. Maybe having HMD at a different time during the month would also help?
DROP/HIATUS/ETC PAGES; Since a lot of people are talking about this - I think that combining hiatus & drop is a bit less confusing than having reserves & drops on the same page. That's really my only input on that.