from what I'm seeing, a MAJOR change is that all characters appear onscreen, and I no longer have to “animate them” on. A battle character set comes with frames for “spellcasting/tech use”, attacks, death, status conditions, etc.
Better yet, now weapons can be animated ONTO the character battle stes, so that multiple people can use the same weapons! God! That's gonna get rid of a serious headache! Now I can equip all GBs with one proton pack, rather than having to make an individual item for everyone….that was just because everyone would be using the same animation frames! Now we have the luxury of battle char. sets!