ehhh... i like the short term fix, combined with chrono cross type special combos for certain skill orders, and just special effects animations for most combinations. having the system be about cueing the skills without locking your actions, allow it to be a little longer that 1.5 seconds for the combos, as long as they balance the damage with increase in time, and longer locking you in place risk.

The SC system while interesting will require at least one person to do their animation, and no one else to interfere during WS, in this way the damage would have to be balanced for losing WS from the total PT for the duration.
the damage of an SC boosting two players damage for 5 seconds, but lowering other players damage/options for that same time period.


like you said the BR system needs more of a carrot, the effect is not enough to reward players, hence the cool effects for any combinations, and special team up skill for certain ones.

they should add BRs that arent just based off damage, link some BRs to abilities, and cures.

i think cross BRs, would be really good, but the mechanism for linking different players for different BRs at the same time would probably confuse people, and make it even slower.

The br stacking system does need a learning curve, but i assure you SCs were much harder to teach, it often took quite awhile for people to get the timing, and then they had to learn the rules, some people never learned.