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1) Ramza's skillset is additive. You never lose skills. It's also interesting to note that ONLY Ramza has "locked skills" (not Agrias, or Mustadio, or Beowulf). The reason is simple: only Ramza exhibits the character growth in the story that would justify such additions. Jot5 is not really a story about character growth; we have no good means of justifying that mechanic.
Another common method of justification is time lapse wherein Chapter I and II take place 2+ years about in the game's storyline. If something happens to certain characters in between, unlocking new skills (or losing old ones) is justified, but it has to exist in the story for its own sake and not be tacked-on. Again, Jot5 does not do this in between chapters.
As for having each chapter not accumulate the gains of the previous, that works best when
A) The units change between chapters. One variant is the aforementioned physical / mental changes to existing characters (or a replacement of existing characters with new ones); another is the use of generic troops (so that you cannot be sure the generics you deploy in Chapter II are the same people as in Chapter I).
B) The gains accrued are temporary. In other words, if all the bonuses are intended to be in-battle only (and reflect temporary states of heightened physical or mental prowess), then obviously, they should wear off when combat ends.
C) The game is real time. IN real time games, it is often possible for a good player to beat the game with average or basic gear simply due to skill. In such games, gear and abilities often matter less than your ability to dodge attacks and find opportune moments to strike. Thus, resetting the gear in between chapters in such games is actually a means of increasing difficulty while still being fair.
D) The situation confronting the characters in Chapter II is so different that all the abilities and gear acquired in Chapter I are useless. This works better if each chapter can "stand alone" as separate games.
It's obvious Jot5 meets none of the above conditions. Furthermore, the starting scene DID erase everyone's skills to 0. I'm sure Ramza (having survived all of FFT's plot) and the other heroes (many of whom were in active combat in their worlds) should have had starting skills (which isn't THAT hard to ASM), but given that 2 years have passed for Ramza and the way the other characters entered the scene, you can justify them all starting again as novices (even though the in-game reason is that we just started a new game). However, to find 3 more excuses for the same thing happening is to stretch the incredulity of the player. Furthermore, games work better if the difficulty curve generally increases from beginning to end. Resetting skills and gear in between chapters makes it harder to follow this pattern.
2) The game is being released piecemeal due to technical limitations that can only be solved with a massive amount of ASM. Once we accepted that, it was decided to release per chapter (rather than all at once) so people wouldn't have to wait three years. Hence, it is assumed every release is meant to be part of an integrated whole (not some glorified demo for the full version). Of course, each chapter will be properly defined with a boss and a climax of its own, but there's no reason to assume Chapter I should be anything less than Chapter IV.
3) Your job locking proposal can be accomplished without ASM, but that aside, why is the game "incomplete" because it contains features you "weren't supposed to have"? Wouldn't the game be "more incomplete" if those features were taken away and you were left only with 6 or 8 unlockable jobs in Chapter I? If anything, all Raven did was a milder version of what Voldemort did in 1.3; he reversed the grinding paradigm so that an "easy run" is based on the intuitive strategies of a first-time player with experience at SRPGs and a "difficult run" involves over-leveling or "early tech tree scaling" of FFT "experts". In other words, it penalizes those who overspecialized their playing style towards vanilla FFT. Once you mentally adjust to what "challenge" means in this new system, the fun will flow naturally.
4) Unless Raven changed it since last I played Chapter I, you do have Move-Get JP. It's not as bad as you say, but even then, the question must be posed. Why do you have to master ninja or samurai or whatever else immediately? Why not just buy the necessary skills necessary to win battles on your first play-through and worry about completion after you have a grasp of the game?
5) As for game balance, Raven is probably the best FFH has at the subject. I'm sure he knows already what the maximum damage on any given unit combination is and he already set them within acceptable bounds.
Another common method of justification is time lapse wherein Chapter I and II take place 2+ years about in the game's storyline. If something happens to certain characters in between, unlocking new skills (or losing old ones) is justified, but it has to exist in the story for its own sake and not be tacked-on. Again, Jot5 does not do this in between chapters.
As for having each chapter not accumulate the gains of the previous, that works best when
A) The units change between chapters. One variant is the aforementioned physical / mental changes to existing characters (or a replacement of existing characters with new ones); another is the use of generic troops (so that you cannot be sure the generics you deploy in Chapter II are the same people as in Chapter I).
B) The gains accrued are temporary. In other words, if all the bonuses are intended to be in-battle only (and reflect temporary states of heightened physical or mental prowess), then obviously, they should wear off when combat ends.
C) The game is real time. IN real time games, it is often possible for a good player to beat the game with average or basic gear simply due to skill. In such games, gear and abilities often matter less than your ability to dodge attacks and find opportune moments to strike. Thus, resetting the gear in between chapters in such games is actually a means of increasing difficulty while still being fair.
D) The situation confronting the characters in Chapter II is so different that all the abilities and gear acquired in Chapter I are useless. This works better if each chapter can "stand alone" as separate games.
It's obvious Jot5 meets none of the above conditions. Furthermore, the starting scene DID erase everyone's skills to 0. I'm sure Ramza (having survived all of FFT's plot) and the other heroes (many of whom were in active combat in their worlds) should have had starting skills (which isn't THAT hard to ASM), but given that 2 years have passed for Ramza and the way the other characters entered the scene, you can justify them all starting again as novices (even though the in-game reason is that we just started a new game). However, to find 3 more excuses for the same thing happening is to stretch the incredulity of the player. Furthermore, games work better if the difficulty curve generally increases from beginning to end. Resetting skills and gear in between chapters makes it harder to follow this pattern.
2) The game is being released piecemeal due to technical limitations that can only be solved with a massive amount of ASM. Once we accepted that, it was decided to release per chapter (rather than all at once) so people wouldn't have to wait three years. Hence, it is assumed every release is meant to be part of an integrated whole (not some glorified demo for the full version). Of course, each chapter will be properly defined with a boss and a climax of its own, but there's no reason to assume Chapter I should be anything less than Chapter IV.
3) Your job locking proposal can be accomplished without ASM, but that aside, why is the game "incomplete" because it contains features you "weren't supposed to have"? Wouldn't the game be "more incomplete" if those features were taken away and you were left only with 6 or 8 unlockable jobs in Chapter I? If anything, all Raven did was a milder version of what Voldemort did in 1.3; he reversed the grinding paradigm so that an "easy run" is based on the intuitive strategies of a first-time player with experience at SRPGs and a "difficult run" involves over-leveling or "early tech tree scaling" of FFT "experts". In other words, it penalizes those who overspecialized their playing style towards vanilla FFT. Once you mentally adjust to what "challenge" means in this new system, the fun will flow naturally.
4) Unless Raven changed it since last I played Chapter I, you do have Move-Get JP. It's not as bad as you say, but even then, the question must be posed. Why do you have to master ninja or samurai or whatever else immediately? Why not just buy the necessary skills necessary to win battles on your first play-through and worry about completion after you have a grasp of the game?
5) As for game balance, Raven is probably the best FFH has at the subject. I'm sure he knows already what the maximum damage on any given unit combination is and he already set them within acceptable bounds.