Has Gauges helped you a lot?

[Enkidoh]

I generally find them annoying and distracting to be honest - they take up so much room on the screen I often find my eye being drawn to it meaning I miss an AoE telegraph or enemy attack. Really it seems nearly all Jobs don't even need it, in that the info shown on them could easily be covered by an existing icon and timer on the status bar, other than RDM, as JunseiKei mentioned, it seems the entire concept was designed specifically for RDM and then the development team realized "Oh bother, now we need to adapt this concept to every other Job otherwise it will overshadow them". It was basically a solution in search of a problem.

Of course the secondary reason for it's introduction was players didn't notice certain status icons were active (like PLD and oaths active or deactivated) and hence the gauge was meant to make that "more noticeable", but that was simply due to human tendency to desensitize visual clutter which they become used to and not because the icon wasn't noticeable enough. In fact, it made the problem worse, in that because it's so ostentatiously large, the mind is even more determined to ignore it, hence making the whole point of it backfire. It became more a hindrance than a help. Or at least, it's like that for me.

I'm sorry to Yoshi and the development team for this as I know they are trying to make things easier, but it was a change that I personally do not think was really necessary, and like many I would prefer an option to disable it completely on a Job by Job basis, and just have it's info on a small icon and timer on the status bar, as how the Job Gauge is at the moment is ultimately superfluous.

[Cidel]

other than RDM, as JunseiKei mentioned, it seems the entire concept was designed specifically for RDM and then the development team realized "Oh bother, now we need to adapt this concept to every other Job otherwise it will overshadow them". It was basically a solution in search of a problem.

This is exactly what I've been thinking for the entire job gauge system for the longest time. Most of the jobs I've played have no real need for it and as others have already said, it just gives me yet another spot I need to look at (and I was so accustomed to checking my own buff/debuff bar for job-specific things like AST's cards and SMN's time left on Dreadwyrm).

The whole thing really does feel like something they shoehorned into the rest of the jobs because a new job(s) was designed with a special gauge in mind and they needed to justify designing it that way.

I will concede though, I suppose it does give the devs some elbow-room to be creative with new jobs in the future...