Where's the er, now part exactly in terms of screenshots? Just cause it has similar overall graphics doesn't mean nothing has exactly changed.
Only thing I see you trying to highlight in the image is PvP and well, Jempire.

Personally yeah more PvP games aside from the two we already have would be a nice addition, but can be left to update later on since this isn't the main content of the game.
Also "must make more competitive SK", what do you exactly mean by that? We already have the Coliseum games and the player-made contests people sometimes do (at least back then) to fit the bill for PvP, what more could be added for this aside from more minigames?

board games and SK card game would be a neat addition as it is suitable for recruits and vanguards alike(I know one can just play chess and the like online but it has it's own kind of fun when played in SK).

I kind of think that's the player's doing Sono, for a couple of reasons-

Would you rather be the awesome guy getting all the kills or the awesome guy buffing the team? One of these things feels like playing a hack and slash like you probably came for and the other feels like doing laundry because you don't want to stagger them you want them to die.

And

Would you rather solo Vanaduke with blitz needle or shivermist buster? What about solo a CT level? Stagger storm or combuster? Hmmm...

But the support options in the game are pretty viable. Bombs in particular are far, far stronger than swords are, and only get stronger in a climate full of nothing but sword+gun hybrids... see here's why- if your party has 3x sword/gun users the place they're likely to get stuck on is going to naturally be something like compounds or the end of an arena, and the slower battles for them are going to be ones that demand tons of crowd control. Bombs and support options in general are pretty much the answer to both of these. Further, if you're paired with someone better than you- and you often are- then you're going to be a LOT more useful spamming vortexes for them to shoot into or lighting crowds on fire than trying to deal the damage yourself, since they're going to just obliterate everything anyway.

When you get to the endgame then you're going to experience some massive power boosts- volcanic demo is the best class armor by a long shot (except for Seerus of course), and the haze bombs don't require any damage bonus or heat if you fed your sprite enough. You'll probably be at a pretty huge deadzone for damage, since you're going to be at +0 damage and the main damage bomb line (shard bombs) just flat out doesn't function correctly due to bugged invincibility frames... but again, everyone is going to be using the answer to your problems, and you're going to need to seek out and find Fangel and I to farm with anyway.

Interesting note is that new icons were definitely easier on the system, since they were all recolors. With the current system, if I have a Levi, all the Brandishes, and a Protosword, I have to load an image for each sword. In the old system, you had to load just one image and then the game recolored it. Since the game doesn't pre-load images (it should on systems with a lot of memory!), the old UI made a lot more sense from a design stand point.

This also was nice for weapons because there was a color scheme for statuses and damage types. Despite the simplicity, I had a good idea of what each weapon did in terms of damage. Not only that, each weapon attack style had a unique art set. Because of this, you could tell that "My Brandish has the same combo as a Calibur" and "This BAB explodes in the same way as a Nitronome." This wasn't true all the time (Rocket Hammers were NOT the same as Troikas) but it was helpful a lot of the time. This is something that the new UI doesn't do.

But I digress. The old system didn't show you what the item looked like. This sucked for armors and helmets because they all looked exactly the same. So the new system is better for armors, helms, and shields, and worse for weapons.

Also, materials don't see much gain or loss. They are all monochrome, as well. (They're one color with different shades.)

So many old friends in these pictures.... also shout out to Dark Guardians in the GVG rankings :D