This idea is probably the craziest one I've come up with. Hopefully, it's actually possible.

Players should be able to buy, with TC or Paypal, new Toribash opening fighting stances. There are many fighting stances from martial art techniques that we can use as reference. That also means a lot of money can be made. This market product would change the game play experience for the player. It's a product that could actually matter.

Buying a new opening fighting stance in TORIBASH is like buying a new champion in a Free-to-Play MOBA such as League of Legends, buying a new gun in a Free-to-Play MMOFPS such as Combat Arms or buying a new sword for your avatar in a Free-to-Play MMORPG such as Dragon Nest.

The player gets to use one fighting stance for free by default when they start playing. That stance would be the current fighting stance in the game. Similar to how a player usually only gets to use one gun for free by default when they start playing. The gun isn't terrible, but it's not as good as the other guns. So the player is most likely going to buy more guns. If the player chooses to stick with the default gun, he'll need to master it and master the game to be highly successful in competitive play. The fighting stance can actually be named “Default” if no other names get chosen.

If the team isn't experienced with game balance, I'd be able to help you and the other developers with balancing the stances. We'd have to make sure Toribash doesn't become “Pay to Win”.

You'll need to figure out where the players will be able to change there fighting stances back and forth

Due to how there's over 1000 mods in the Toribash, we have possibly over 1000 mods to base the fighting stances on. That means buying fighting stances for Aikido is for Aikido only. Fighting stances bought for Wushu can only be used in Wushu.

Purchasable Fighting Stances will also give players another way to personalize how they play TORIBASH. And the game will finally be able to attract more MOBA fans and fighting game fans. I hope this interests you.

*Feel free to build on this idea, guys. But I doubt Hampa will give this idea a go. Too busy working on more important things, i'm sure.*

In an indirect way this could be a way to gain advantage over your opponent.
(Depending on the pose)

What about a system that makes it so you can select certain pose starts.

Kind of like flags.

I remember seeing this suggestion a while back.
Given the nature of toribash, how you have to designt the moves and all.
If both players are in different poses then in someway one is going to have an advantage over the other. That being said, you're also going to inevitably have a situation in which one pose is the best for a specific mod for 'x' reason ( that isn't to say that you're not going to have games in which the person with the "better" pose loses). And that leading upto a pay to win type of deal going on.
I personally don't think it's a good idea.
However.
If it is applied to the game I think it should be restricted, players should onlybe able to use poses in private servers.

Something like this was suggested and was unsupported because its unfair. Lots of people wont be able to pay for these stances if its issues with money or issues with them being a kid and not having access to paypal and its just unfair in general. It would be interested maybe in Spar but in a competitive game mode, Not supported.

If stances mattered that much then this might be worth it, but they don't. Stuff like dragon balls, and cards like 20k damage reduction for specialized servers..I could be behind though.

Doesn't make a difference how you start really. It's also already possible, merely not right away when you start a game, there's a bit of preparation to be done. Like 5 minutes of it.
You can make custom starting poses in SP via. Notepad.
You can create custom mods and change the position e.t.c.

Wouldn't really enjoy playing as much if people completely screwed around and made it ridiculously weird.
Finally, how exactly would these be activated? New item, options, hotkeys? Seems like a bit of a hassle to deactivate/activate an item every time you wanted to change how you started.
It'd be preferable to leave it as it is right now. Make it possible to change your starting position with notepad/mod maker, but don't create an entirely new section of the market just for it.

I believe you can do this in the mod settings. I heard it was awfully complicated though.
Anyways, I don't see much of a purpose in it. All mods I've seen handles pre-game perfectly without this. The whole purpose of pre-game is to get into the position you like.
I'm not going to say that aikido is supposed to be played in a specific way, but the opener is a very minor part of the game, and putting too much focus on it will only lead to Minibash.
At least this applies to the mods I've played so far.

I think we'd benefit from it more if there was mods customized for it, with long distance between players to avoid collision. I guess it would make some kind of wushu, with the main focus on launcher openers. It would be like a newbie-friendly wushu, which might be just what we need for the steep learning curve. Putting focus on other mods than aikido is also a good idea.

It would also be smarter to have all openers free, so we could pick from a selection in the main menu or something. There is no real point in having to pay for it.

It's one of the things that make Minibash not as fun as it could be.
~Not supported.

People could just place their openers as the set stance,they win the game.
~Unsupported

This could be a nice addition but as said it rises a few problems; toribash is made so that no item purchase gives you an immediate advantage over the opponent. Now however having a set opener does not seem problematic in mods such as ninjutsu/wushu which have been largely dominated by openers till' a year ago or so.

However the implementation of something like this has more than two sides; Do we want toribash to be largely opener dominated "again"? Does this hold gameplay value to such an extent that it outweighs the current "fair system"?

I'd say this would be a nice addition to some mods, have they players for the first 3 turns make moves, then be teleported to the standard starting positions where they fall down to the ground, and then the game starts.

However, this can be done withy mods, so I see no great reason for a client change.