As many have stated, the reason crafted gear can never reach the level of dungeon gears is for a few reasons:

- Vertical progression: In this game, all we need is "one gear set to rule them all". Just by context, the iLevel system means that as long as you are capped on primary stats, you are technically geared enough to take on the toughest fight in the game, which is Twintania. There is no reason to have more than one set of gear, unless you're a hardcore min-maxer (ie. those people with separate sets for Warrior MT, Warrior OT, and Warrior pure DPS, and even in this case, your Warrior MT set is still enough to do the OT/DPS job).
- Combating RMT: We also know that crafted gear simply introduces an outlet for RMT to abuse. The reason dungeon gear is non-tradeable is to prevent RMT (but look at how selling runs is about the same as selling gear too). If crafted gear were to be non-tradeable...then what's the point of even having crafted gear at all? Combined with the above fact of vertical progression, an i90 crafted gear is equally as good as an i90 gear from Coil, and there's literally no reason to have both - one or the other is fine, simply for the max primary stats (ie. VIT +15 on i90 accessories for tanks) you can gain in the current point of time. If you were given the option to buy them outright instead of farming a dungeon for your drop, people would be geared in a day or less, as long as they had money to burn.
- Pace of Gearing: If you were to able to be geared within a day just by buying everything, why do Myth caps exist now? How would we implement caps such that you can only buy an i90 piece every week or fortnight from the marketboard?

That said, I believe the only way to make crafting relevant is horizontal progression. Perhaps introduce some stat that makes specific fights easier. For example, being able to craft gear with innate Fire Resistance for Twintania, then being able to meld any required secondary stats like Accuracy in order to take on Twintania. Introduce more secondary stats. Knockback Resistance? Chance to inflict Piercing Resistance Down debuff every x seconds? I don't know, something needs to be done to put them on the same level, but not have one invalidate the other completely.

Otherwise, it'll be just a mere afterthought. I do enjoy crafting myself, but recently I've lost the joy in crafting, because I don't craft anything else other than spiritbonding accessories.