Square Enix, please think about both Casual AND Hardcore crafters..

[Granyala]

You're literally arguing that it's a good thing because it gives you less of a reason to play this game. You are the last person anyone in SE should cater to. Stop trying to take the game away from people who enjoy it, to say nothing of insisting you're doing us a favor in doing so.

Correct, although I do believe I didn't make my intentions clear enough:

Games have addictive tendencies to it. These can be enforced through design or mitigated.
A responsible game DEV finds a balance and puts in restrictions in order to avoid that the players damage themselves.
If a design basically requires you to no-life it in order to get anywhere (Hello, ARR spiritbinding), that is a harmful design, should be considered as that and be avoided.

This has nothing to do with "geeking out" over a game or taking things away from people. I like to geek out over Lore and class design as much as the next guy and certainly won't chastise people for being invested into these things.
You don't have to design the game as a soul crushing RNG grind in order for people to have fun. What I am advocating here is not "less game" in a strict sense but more "different game".

I am advocating: less dumb, mindless time requirement and more skill/brainpower requirement.
I want to see more intelligent games and less tedious ones. I want to use my head in order to achieve success and not be beaten simply because I have life, other hobbies and a job and cannot dedicate an absurd amount of time into a video game.
An example of that kind of system would be the old WoW vanilla PvP ranks that basically required 24h play to stay at the top, account sharing included.

That should be in all our interest because using our brains is much more fun that doing the same mundane thing over and over and over and hope that some RNG decides that you will now be granted "success".

In that regard: yes, I totally agree that the current crafting system is too mindless and easy. So was the old one.

Because Savage and Ultimate are in many respects their own reward, so removing the gear from them doesn't actually do much.

Yeahh.. no. Sorry, nope.
As a raider with about a decade of experience, I can tell you that individuals that stick through 100s of wipes for the sake of the challenge are few and far inbetween. Certainly not enough to form a healthy raiding community. Sadly (and this is where a lot of inner raid conflicts stem from) most people are in it for the shinies.

Personally I always hated farming bosses for gear. I don't care about gear at all (barring looks for kitty dress-up of course ). If it were up to me, we would kill a boss once or twice and then move on to the next. Because the challenge has been beaten and that boss no longer holds my interest.