Endgame should be challenging - that's the point (from a casual player)

[Kaurhz]

I mentioned Experts simply because they cannot be crafted reliably with a macro. Everything else can, once you figure out a rotation.
To call crafting "difficult" is just dishonest.
It's as easy and braindead as games can be. It just ate a shitload of time, especially due to overmelds being mandatory in early game and grabbing materia via spirit binding yourself was a major slog.

And I did craft in ARR and Heavensward, so I know what I am talking about, even if memory is a bit hazy after all this time.

Needing a lot of time for no reason != hard content. That is tedious content. Very different thing and I am glad that SE toned down on that when it comes to crafting.

I wish they would do something with the: "stand around for half an hour to be able to hit a gathering node for 10 seconds" as well. Such asinine design.

Like I said, perhaps not difficult but it demanded attention, and this is just where I am simply going to disagree with you.. The ability to craft endgame crafted gear should not just simply be a freebie for merely having a pulse and reaching the endgame level. Because that is the situation where nigh on every facet of the game suffers from. You were rewarded for engaging with the systems, e.g., WWYW. Some abilities still involved an element of resource management and appropriation, e.g., not wasting CP on Ingenuity when you didn't really need to. Then really just given the fact that if you wanted to engage with master recipes from the ARR-era, you will still pretty much required to engage with those master recipes, e.g., going from Treated Spruce Lumber to get your master recipe book I, and then Master Recipe Book II by crafting Reinforced Spruce Plywood, it combined several other systems, e.g., Grand Companies and Desynthesis.

and frankly, you may dislike many of those systems, which is your own prerogative... But really this whole avenue of leaving everything to the wayside in forgotten and abandoned systems in favor of instant completion is precisely why this game is as soul-less as it is in many facets.

But then really if you want to get down to it, much of ARR-era was not really difficult anyway, you had an aggressive innate delay which just made gameplay unresponsive... Many fights were buggy in ways that just made clearing a nuisance, e.g., non-intuitive stats for average player, e.g., people over-capping accuracy like crazy and wasting secondary stats... Sure they were creative -- the encounters -- But much of the difficulty was still lent to the fact of abysmal design.

and this whole "Stand around for half an hour to be able to hit a gathering node for 10 seconds", is pretty much exacerbated by the fact they've reduced it into such a streamlined and meaningless existence.... If the systems were actually substantive behind it, then you wouldn't be doing that -- Because you would for example be going around doing concealed nodes, stocking up on Demimateria from desynthesis, going around doing duties or crafting items to stock up on your Grand Company to purchase materials for said master recipes... As the material distribution for these items was also adjusted when they elected to just pour everything into direct scrip and folklore. e.g., needing 3 folklore material per craft, in addition to a GC item as opposed to just straight 4 folklore material items.

This whole discarding of 'needing a lot of time for no reason, and being tedious content' -- Is precisely why you're doing the whole... Whack 1 node for 10 seconds and then wait 5-30 minutes for the next. You may not have liked these systems, but their absence of many of these systems is precisely why you have that gameplay.