With mounts recently confirmed as coming ‘in future’ in the latest video dev-blog, I see a massive opportunity to create another wonderful profession. There’s a vast plethora of crafting and research that could be introduced, as a requirement to make mount rollouts a reward and not a given, and therefore give an additional sense of achievement, identity and character specialties.
If we think of the profession similar to existing professions (such as engineering + furnishing being being workshop crafts, etc), it could be split into separate trees.
• Taming - Locating, Coaxing and Trust (Knowledge and Skills)
• Riding - Saddles, Grips and Storage? (Crafting)
• Food/Care - Self explanatory, though this could be added to the currently not too interesting Cooking profession.
An underlying addition to all those could be attributes, if introduced. Such as riding speeds, resilience (scaring to AI, knock-offs to PVP hits, etc). Much like we have various attributes to gear and weapons, mounts could do this also.
Of course mounts will come in the future, most likely meaning once the map is bigger. Another idea is to remove most if not all shrines, leaving only city-to-city fast travel, with mounts affording 1.5-2x+ running speed basically replacing the existing pace of mobility.