Gear management was a bit harder before we had the little page symbol for gear that's part of a gear set. But with that there, it's really not difficult at all. When you get some new gear, you check the other jobs you're leveling and see if it's an upgrade. If it is, you update the gear set. When you gain some levels on a job, you look through your armory to see if you've got upgrades waiting, and again, update gear set. It's a couple minutes at a time at worst.

And I feel like I'm leveling just as fast now (with pretty much no quests left anywhere), with leves and fates and roulettes and dungeons and hests and beast tribe dailies and the challenge log, as I was when I was reading all that quest text and watching all those cutscenes. I suppose if you don't read and you skip cutscenes, questing would be more of a noticeable difference.