To be fair, the OP has an extremely valid point. Argue semantics all you like, but the 'master crafting' is a perfect example of grind for the sake of grind.

Now if Silver Brocade, for example, were used in an actual crafting recipe or have some value beyond trading it for worthless junk at the selfsame vendor I might worry less about grinding away 60 of the things for weapon + headgear. But they don't. It's solid proof that SE just doesn't understand what to do with the crafting system they've got in place. I'm almost convinced that the only reason we have some kind of system at the moment is because it was largely already in place during 1.0.

Perhaps the post was worded improperly. The term 'wasting time' implies that there's no real progression when in reality what they've done is slow it to a crawl artificially. They could go out of their way to actually make it fun again, but that would require something resembling effort, which they haven't felt compelled to do for crafters since launch.

People have this weird notion that if you dislike an aspect of the game it means you dislike the whole game, and people are quick to get defensive when something they enjoy is targeted. Well, I love crafting. I maxed all of my crafters as a labour of love, not a grindfest and took each new high level synth as a challenge to be met. Hitting a brick wall because you don't have every piece of HQ gear melded with the absolute best materia money can't buy, and every single crafting food item known to Lalafell kind is just poor design.