Actually I agree with about every item on the the ways JRPGs can be improved.
Random encounters are old, I like seeing my monsters before I fight them so I can skip them if needed or have the encounter rate thing like Bravely Default. This was great in Chrono Trigger...why other games reverted back...heck if I know.
Side quests that are like bring me 30 pieces of dirt and blah blah blah cause Witch #3 needs it are boring. I remember fun side quests like the one in Star Ocean 2 where I can recruit a whole other party member, have the cooking mini game, item creation, and the dungeon at the end. The game was excellent because of everything you could do and most of the time nowadays side quests are meh and pretty boring. Isn't it also cool when the side quests help you know about side members of the party, or people living in the world. Sounds like a good time to me.
Persona 3 and 4 despite having a fun battle system and such are remembered because we got to know the characters through the social links plus the great story (I was relating a lot of it to myself...not a bad thing at all for a game to make me think about life). I'm all for fluffy stories now and then (like the Hyperdimension Neptunia ones which are fun to play), but it's good to get away from cliches now and then. Sometimes I don't want to save the world, and just want to do other things....
The pacing hurt a lot of people on FFXIII, while the pacing hurt for it's predecessor to me FFXII. I felt by the time I stopped playing the game (around 48 hours) that the cogs of the machine where just turning for the main story. By then I was already kind of bored and I stopped playing for good. I'm not saying all RPGS should be like 8-10 hours but sometimes there is no urgency in the stories and it just keeps dragging. Heck the newest Mario & Luigi game is know for the bad pacing with its tutorials way late into the game. Getting into the action or at least the story at a decent pace helps keep peoples attention.
Filler content...i'm agreeing with the less backtracking (esp with mass random encounters!). Sometimes filler is OK (like mini games or side quests at certain points in the game that are optional...such as that Moogle Mail in FFIX). It is pretty awesome when in a game you visit a town and the people act different towards you depending on where you are in the story. I remember this from games like both Lunar games (excellent games!) and some like Chrono Trigger. If a townperson doesn't tell me anything interesting it's a one and done type thing....will never hear some line again.
Non combat progression is kind of awesome. It gives you something else to do...bit too vague in that article though. I do agree about relationships in games and the social link system is great. In something like Suikoden (please revive this series!) you get to recruit all 101 stars if you want and in turn build a town usually. It's fun and keeps me going in those games (though the story is excellent in most of the ones I've played....haven't really played 4).
This exploration part goes along with cutting the filler I believe. I remember some old snes, psx whatever RPG games where sometimes you had real cool looking buildings and such, but you couldn't find anything in any of them....there were just barrels, shelves, a bunch of blah and you would just go from point A to point B because why bother. Instead for games where I can get items, meet people, find treasure, get magic extraction points (I probably wouldn't play FF8 now though!), find rare monsters, get songs/crafting recipes/etc..... I want to explore the world and when you're allowed to find things around you'll want to.
That's my 2 cents though and I'm a longtime RPG player from the SNES/Genesis days. RPGs are fun and all, but now being older you really can tell what's special and not. Cookie cutter RPGS are everywhere (hello RPGMaker games and whole lot of others being received) so it's nice when some stand out. I'm sure people wont remember Mind=0 like they will Persona 3/4 or Conception 2...heck I haven't played in about a month and I forgot mostly everything going on except better relationships and eliminate evil popping up in the world.
ing stupid as shit, but hey it was in Drakengard 2 so why not right? I play a ton of JRPGs and it is my favorite genera, hell I am even a moderator over at /r/JRPG and honestly every review that I read from the genera sucks. 
