Guild Wars 2

Well Sirendor, my thoughts on using this as a game mechanism is that it seems kind of redundant. Isn’t this the job of the trait skills, to enhance your role as a support, or offense, or tank? Having multiple stances on each weapon would require the game designers to come up with a multitude of new skills to fit weapon + stance. While this would be very fun for players, I doubt ANet is willing to invest the time to develop it.

Alternatively, producing some more traits that can enhance the 3 roles for each class would be far more beneficial without the need to create hundreds of new skills. TheDaiBish makes an excellent point in being able to group different skills in slots 2 – 5. It would increase versatility among players.

My suggestion on using this on a new class was a compromise to players and developers. A new class to explore the stances and guards system (so let’s say a certain stance is excellent at evading) can be built with the existing skills infrastructure while developers can work on additional mechanisms for parries and counters if this is actually enjoyable. I’ve never actually seen a game that uses different stances, and I only draw knowledge from stance philosophies in martial arts. I feel that a more varied combat philosophy would help counter the fact that you can figure out exactly what a player is going to do based on their weapon choices.

I feel that the stance system should be limited to a new class… musketeer class? (dreaming)

Something sort of like Elementalists’ ability to switch between the elements, but caters to specific stances and guards that would help them do more interesting moves.

I actually feel like there should be a mounts system, but make it so that using mounts is a trade-off.

Reasons to use a mount:
Move faster (OK, we don’t really need to move faster, but for places like WvW, might not be a bad idea)
Stronger “charging” attacks
Potential for aerial combat (hoping)
Mounts can be raised like pets

Tradeoffs:
If you are knocked down, you spend 2 seconds stunned
Your weapon choices are limited (similar to while swimming)
Your mount could die, which costs extra to revive
Your mount follows you around when you’re not riding it, exposed to the dangers of the world.

Thoughts?