Achelexus

The limit to ability slots is actually a good reason not to limit job levels, since it means that grinding all jobs to the max isn't a huge power boon, it just grants more options. I'm just not a fan of the idea of being able to screw yourself permanently because of things that you can't foresee. A beginner going in blind isn't going to know what every class does, nor which sort of abilities he'll need to beat the game. I'm a fan of the original FF5 because on the occasions where you had difficulties on a certain boss because of your character classes, you could always level another class which had skills more suitable to the occasion. I wanted to try to beat the hack in its highest difficulty level, however it might actually be impossible if I don't level the correct classes.

Interesting. Do you think you could make MP regen be a set % of the unit's max MP instead? Seems like it would be more balanced and scale better throughout the game.

Good article. Touches on a lot of design problems I wish more people (specially developers) were aware of. However I disagree with you on the matter of the "leaked experience". For me, that's the best way to handle benched character growth. Without it, most games just become a matter of picking a main party and sticking with it, as trying to level all characters equally becomes both grindy/slow and ineffective (since you can only use X characters at once, is it not better to have X characters at level 30 instead of ALL characters at level 20?). It also means that the player only needs to take in account the situation they're facing to deciding who to use, instead of being coerced into bring characters ineffective characters just so they can catch up to the rest. Ultimately if it's a matter of making sure players have to use everyone available, the best way to do it is by actually making the game require the player to swap around units to be able to overcome challenges. After all, why would I not just use my bread and butter team for the entire game if there's not a single battle which they can't beat?

Does it mean you can essentially get fucked if you level too much of the wrong jobs? Can you reset them somehow? And the grind I'm talking about is more related to the character level instead. JRPGs in general tend to be a battle of numbers, so leveling up, and increasing your HP, attack, defence, etc as a consequence tends to be the main way to get stronger. Job level, on the other hand, are more of a "sidegrade", since it offers more tools to beat the game (mostly skills or passives), instead of just raising your numbers.

This seems pretty interesting. FF 5 was always one of my favorite ones. Should I go in blind or check everything that changed? Also are there plans to not just let the game be "grind 2 win" instead of having actual challenge?

I started playing the game with the mod a few months ago, and quit for a while. Now I'm wanting to resume my play through, but with the latest version of it. If I update it now, will my old save file still work without any issue?