Aye they purposely put that barrier in there because they didn't want it to become a standard like in FFXI, just the same way they didn't want people dual-wielding weapons.

Since the game doesn't have something that lets you change all gear at once, there's really no way to avoid blinking. And why would they go around making such fixes if they still have no intention on incorporating gear swapping (probably the only thing keeping mages from having too much of an advantage tbh). If anything I'd say SE went out of their way to make sure it didn't come back.

Actually SE's excuse for the slow menu interface was to help counter RMT actions, but IMO it just hurt the game in the end. It doesn't help the servers internal architecture is horrendous making things that much worse to actually accomplish anything.