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

[Driavna]

With the new skills from 60+ on crafters and the fact that Byregot's and Steady Hand II are now on all crafter jobs, I'd say you can probably get away with just level 15 in each craft for certain basic utility skills.

Ingenuity I is nearly as good as Ingenuity II. With recent caps added to Piece By Piece and Muscle Memory, coupled with the addition of new skills, you can get by without either of those now. I'll admit Comfort Zone has no real equivalent and is a very significant ability for CP management, but for "casual" crafting, you can probably get by without it. Careful Synthesis II is nice because its free but Careful Synthesis III is fine for casual crafting only costs 7cp. If we're talking "casual" crafting, I'm not sure Flawless Synthesis and Maker's Mark should even be part of the conversation, and the new skills provide alternatives. Innovation can be supplemented with the Specialist action Innovative Touch (and if you're only leveling one crafter why wouldnt you specialize in it?)

Basically the only significant losses by not going to 50+ on each crafter is Ingenuity II and Comfort Zone, and maaaybe Reclaim in my opinion. Sure there's something to be said for the other skills like Piece By Piece, etc but for the "casual" crafter, you really can get by with just going to 15 in all the crafting classes these days and 15 is super easy to reach.

You still have "the problem" of having to buy any material from other professions just to level up, outside CUL and probably ALC, and perhaps the gear. IMO, that's the biggest burden GIL wise. Personally, I think the next step will make all professions totally independent of each other.

3. I don't have anything to say here. Server wide markets are for the player and I am a player. If you don't have a server wide market, you have an unofficial hub that people visit the most, and you effectively have a server wide market anyways. The Ole Undercity / Ironforge if you will.

In Stars Wars Galaxy the market was centralized via bazaar kiosk, however, the max amount of credits you could ask for an item was capped and you needed to go to the kiosk the vendor put the stuff.

If you wanted to sell more expensive stuff you needed to set up your own shop. For that investment on merchant skill point was necessary. In order to show items at the global marketplace, you will need to invest more points, however, the limitation of having to go to your vendor to buy the stuff still applies. Before the expansion of "Jump to the lightspeed" travelling around to certain areas will potentially require 30m (or even more if you were really unlucky).

This alone added a layer "of complexity" to be more competitive than other vendors by virtue of having a better-located shop, people will be more than willing to pay more to save time. Another aspect that could give you an edge over others is your shop also becoming famous enough, that way you could drop some merchant skill points for more useful stuff.

Still, as I said before FFXIV is a theme park MMO and you can't build a sandbox crafting system around it. IMO is ok enough the way it is right now, perhaps more can be done to make it less niche.

Note: Probably some SwG details are not totally accurate.