Crafting... Why are we doing it?

[Zantetsuken]

Everything you said was basically irrelevant.
I am talking about Vanya/Darksteel stuff and making them HQ (which apparently makes armor as strong if not stronger then the actual Darklight gear)
The reason any armor from level 45-50 that isn't HQ and isn't Vanya/Darksteel wouldn't sell is because no one will need it.
You get AF armor at 45 and chest at 50, it doesn't take long to level from 45-50, why would anyone consider spending so much money on gear between those levels when they get AF gear.

If someone wants top of the range stuff, they can buy it with ToP/ToM or purchase HQ level 50 (vanya/darksteel) from market/crafter.

The best crafters can make is HQ ilvl70...

Read my full post.

And yes, I agree that AF eliminates the need for any lvl 45-50 hand/head/leg/feet gear. This is due in large part to the gear's 'vertical progression' model, rather than horizontal (or branching) progression as we see in games like FFXI, Monster Hunter, or Dark Souls.

Ideally, Crafters should be responsible for crafting parts that can be used to trade in for AF gear as well (I'll edit point #5from my post above to include this.)

Personally, I hate this strategy of ONLY vertical progression on gear. Vertical progression makes gear stats boring and flavorless -- furthermore, the easy race to endgame makes anything < ilvl50 pretty much irrelevant. Given enough time, all players will look exactly the same because there is a clear 'BEST' gear in the game per job. Sadly, Yoshi is highly in favor of vertical progression as well as turbo-leveling, and so that's what we have to work with.