I respect how they handled party composition in this one, but I have faith that they will be capable of making party member changing fluid and well thought out.
I think what will happen, gameplay and character wise, is that the entire party will be present in different places in towns, and will comment as stuff happens in dungeons, but you will be able to switch party members both out of combat and in, using ATB.
When sidequests happen and stuff, the requisite party members will show up to talk and interact with it, before going out of view and your current party shows back up. Maybe you even have party members interact passively with stuff as you are in a safe area, and they are walking around! That would be pretty awesome!
I also think having party member switching being so dynamic would be a great help to Materia customization, since you could build each character to handle different threats and work differently. That way you don't have to save Materia Loadouts, you can just have each character built for whatever, and switch them in to cover a Weakness in the party.
I think they will try to incorporate Loadouts in the expanded design, but I hope that they handle party members like this. It was totally great to have everything be more straightforward and controlled in Midgar, but now it would be much better to have dynamic control, and not limit the party too often.
