Get rid of weapons in arenas.

Give everyone an individualized style that is more a representation of their own methods of fighting than any specific martial art.

Only give characters an extra stance for a weapon or something, through a button combination, where appropriate for the character. In other words, unless the character has a weapon as a part of their story (ie. Baraka, Kabal, Kenshi, etc.), I'm fine with thinking they'll get by with hand-to-hand or magical abilities.

In just this, I think the gameplay gets away from the general... blandness of recent titles and gets into a more specialized mode.