The problem isnt quests, npcs, fates, or leve gear; the one thing that's making crafters useless is the developers creating this ridiculous system allowing players to buy darklight, Af +1, and allagan accessories.

In 1.0 because you had to actually work to get darklight, which all wasn't even the best gear, crafted gear actually had a purpose, being to help you farm for darklight, or for the fact that some with melds hq or not was better than dl.
.
Only fix I see, is getting rid of tomes and/or the ability to buy top gear with it. Or actually making crafted gear with far better stats.