Stances

@Taiya_Dordalai get having sympathy for the devs, i do as well with all of the flak the game's been getting for performance, but changes to games even several months after release isn't rare, game devs end up doing it both to fix issues with the game and to give their players little treats; the 5-stance update is kinda both of those things in one.

Technically the 2-stance limit isn't really gameplay anyway let alone core gameplay, it's not like Resident Evil where you're managing the space in an invisible suitcase, it's closer to just choosing a preference like a class in an RPG, that's even how people end up talking about it, they make "builds" around the stance they're "maining" and no one gets to just play as Cal Kestis with his 5 stances available at all times like they are in the cutscenes.

Not to mention there are a number of various accessibility options and difficulty settings that actually affect the gameplay to a drastic degree already in the game. There's not much need to worry about balance in enemy encounters either because the Force already makes you pretty much unstoppable so you aren't all of a sudden going to be mowing down everything in your sight any more than the game already lets you.

If part of the concern is not being able to switch between all of those stances, you don't have to, if they increase options for everyone people can still stick to two or even one of those options like they seem to already do.

In terms of control scheme for it, I would personally love a weapon wheel that just stops everything to let you grab what you want, but i think there's a way to preserve a two-stance focus for people that like it or are concerned about the balance: they have each dpad button cycle the available stances when you hold the focus button and set to that button when you release; you still have two stances that you can quickly switch between and if you want the others you have to strategize on how you're going to make enough space to swap them quickly. And if people would prefer quicker or easier access then it could activate slow mode, the game already has that to turn on at any time. I know people are getting sick of the comparison, but you can toggle slow for the stance and weapon switching in Ghost of Tshushima, I think you can even make it stop completely.

Because at the end of the day, the biggest reason I and many others want all 5 stances that we're not saying out loud is essentially for accessibility purposes. Personally, I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies and ADHD, so returning to the save points just to experience the stances has added hours to my game and the incongruency between the all-in-one design of the lightsaber and having 3/5 of it disabled at all times is a constant grating especially when you're looking at the lightsaber hanging off his belt everywhere you go and you can clearly see that it should be capable of those 4 configurations plus your blaster. And if those changes are just completely unacceptable to people that are used to two, I don't see why there can't be a toggle for "classic" mode. Or hell it could be its own difficulty mode alongside Jedi Grandmaster, call it "Jedi Survivor". Or I think I've mentioned this, the stance limit could just be a slider in accessibility that ranges from 1-5 so even people who like just one stance can really challenge themselves by cutting off the others.

There are so many options for options, I don't get why people are clinging to having only two and insisting that anything more than that would somehow be impossible.