@OP
What I'm most interested in is in how far the changes introduced in ARR actually improve what we had in 1.XX. I mean, I don't know whether you had the pleasure to play the 1.0 alpha, but I did. And I remember that back then, the originally intended combat system was at least a bit more involved than what they released for the open beta later. For example, the stamina gauge (which I, personally, liked) was accompanied with a second meter that allowed you to "overcharge" every single action to enhance it just as much as you considered the optimum for the situation at hand (e.g., by enhancing it's accuracy or power in relation to the time spent for overcharging). Quite nifty a system, just unfortunately poorly executed.
What I fear, and what... people who have friends whose uncles played the ARR alpha... claim to have read in an X-File... is that the battle system changes do not necessarily have to be improvements. I mean, in all possible cases. In theory, for example, it would be possible that they increased the speed and flashiness according to popular demand (ha! that much was discernible from the official previews!), and that there could be a major percentage of players who are not too fond of those changes. For example, some might come to the conclusion that spamming the same ultra-moves at the beginning of every battle with a squirrel just because you start combat with a full TP bar (Yoshi explained the reasons for this in an interview) becomes pretty old pretty fast. Theoretically.
I guess, in absence of the possibility to actually quote stuff posted by... E.T.... on the beta forums we can only wait and see, though.