How will Endwalker make crafting more of a brain dead activity like Shadowbringers?

[Vidu]

Expert isn't much of a bone when the rewards don't compensate adequately for the time and effort. I don't see raiders being asked to spend over 600 hours to get a single mount. Why did SE decide to ask that sort time investment from crafters/gatherers? Unless there's a major change to the reward structure, I expect Expert to get a hardcore ignore next expansion.

While I dont disagree with you here (I'm in this constant state of "I kinda want the flying dino..." and "Nope, my time is way to valuable for that"), there are other mounts in the game that are acquired by DoW/M that take an awefully long grind - Astrope, Hunt-Tiger, to an extend the tank- and PvP-achievment-mounts (though those are obviously a level down). So its not necessarily "raiders" being asked to spent a lot of time getting a mount, but definitly people playing as DoW/M.

(I'm also consoling myself with the thought that one doesnt grind it out only for one mount, but gets scrips and scratch cards along the way... by now I almost feel like selling items bought with skybuilder scrips is more profitable than normal endgame crafting - probably not true, but feels like it for sure...)

[dezzmont]

by now I almost feel like selling items bought with skybuilder scrips is more profitable than normal endgame crafting - probably not true, but feels like it for sure...)

It depends on what you are doing and what server/server cluster you are on, but in general its good to mix up what you are doing anyway because market volume for any area is limited. Skybuilder's stuff is great 'filler' stuff that sells quickly for the most part, and has lots of in demand consumables that aren't glam specific so there is generally more demand.

Its similar to the food market in a lot of ways in that your probably not making your bread and butter sales through it but once you get a certain amount of stock your not making money faster on 'big ticket' items so you need to transition to something people buy in a constant stream.