an idea i had, was that they could make crafting have a 2nd optional mini game per craft, that is more skill based, and the difficulty of the skill based game is multiplied for higher level items. Like imagine if some npc taught you to visualize weaving as tetris. then you could choose to visualize, and the stuff 10 levels ahead would be like super fast tetris. Not saying they should jack tetris, but if they have mini games as an entertaining option, that could work.

The problem with skill based mini games in crafting, is that not everyone has skills, some one may want to be an armorer, but suck at whatever skill based game it has. The system right now is a combination of knowledge and random elements.

I think the issue they keep running into, in this and even in battle, is some people want the systems to be entertaining and skill based, and some people just want to get through with it, building the system for one alienates the other. They need to start adopting a dual progression system, where the player can choose style of play. Just like many ffs have the option for wait or active battle, or how ffxii had the option to micromanage if you wanted to.