Did making the Naruto chars older hurt the series?

[Kraco]

Deidara’s goal was to separate Naruto from Kakashi. Once again this battle was between Deidara and Kakashi. Without Kakashi, Naruto would’ve been defeated in about 2 minutes.

Or Deidara might be dead, which is something Kakashi failed to accomplish. After all, we have no idea how good Naruto actually would be in a real fight to death match now post time skip. He might have needed to go kyuubi coated, but if he had, Deidara probably would have been dead meat or forced to retreat, because he wouldn't have had any nice seal tags to subdue Naruto.

Although it's hard to judge because the one armed Deidara had enabled the cheat mode giving him unlimited clay (that was still all the time running out according to him, yet never did), so who knows, he might have molded a nuclear bomb and defeated kyuubi Naruto that way if needed.

[Buffalobiian]

You can deny Naruto every defeating a Jounin. He skipped right past the Jounin target and tried straight for Sannin, and almost had him. I'd put that on par with the ability to defeat a Jounin, considering how many tried that feat and failed. The only other person I know who had done something similar was Tsunade, another Sannin.

It was also said that Naruto could release the Kyuubi at anytime by just willing the seal to break which I don't think is true because we have seen him get desperate many times and literally beg the kyuubi for chakra yet the seal didn't break and designing the seal so that it would break just because the host got angry and wanted some extra chakra is foolish.

Back when he first learned about using Kyuubi's Chakra, he couldn't get it unless his instincts kicked in when something was about to kill him. As he learns to master it's control, he releases more and more. At the beginning of Shippuuden, the fox was tempting him to release the seal, but Sasuke stopped him. That leads my to believe the fox knows Naruto can undo the seal.