Why is Crafting still in the game?

[DoctorPepper]

I enjoyed leveling my crafts to 50, I enjoy crafting/melding for profit and I also look forward to new crafting recipes and lvl caps as well. Crafting will never become the be all end all in this game but I have never played an mmo that it was really (even in FFXI the useful items you could craft were pretty limited). I love the way they designed the crafting system in this game compared to the typical "press the synth button and wait" approach and I also appreciate being able to have all crafts on a single character..

That said there is definitely room for improvement but I doubt we will ever be able to craft best in slot equipment. Saying that the craftable DoW/DoM gear is useless though is silly since with the right materia some of those pieces are far superior to darklight and some are even close to being on par with myth. Myself and a couple friends have made very good money off crafting 1/2 star items so I would hardly say that nobody uses it.