I am sorry, I think a more direct and simple statement needs to be made to get things through to the devs.

Crafters are getting the shaft:

*We level a class, spending a lot of gil, for stuff that only sells to other crafters.

*Items are free for equal or better with actions.

*End game stuff is ether too week or costs too much!

*In the end; effort is not giving us enough reward.

Fixes:

*Give crafters items equal in power to dungeon drops to make.
-Reasoning, your leveling a class in JUST making items, nothing else, you should be rewarded.

*Give crafters items BETTER than dungeon drops, but make it require dungeon drop materials.
-Reasoning: Again, reward the ones who both try to do crafting and dungeon grinding for the good items. Perhaps make these look better, or look the same but have better stats?

*Make End-Game crafting items cost the same as the item level equivalent from drops, not MORE!
-Reasoning: We would have already payed for the vanity with the hours/days and gil getting the crafting class/es up to that level and getting the gear to even work on these items. If you can't make them yourself, they usually cost about 20k each piece on my server last I checked, and that adds up!

I was really hoping 2.1 would fix these problems and they didn't. So in the end, please, fix crafting.

-Bloodclaw