I bet if the player population were much higher, keeping repairs limited to specific classes wouldn't be that big a deal. As it stands, gear repair is another fatigue system in the sense that it just serves to slow you down.

But really, what incentive do crafters have to repair gear? Virtually none as far as I can tell(other than more gil maybe, but who isn't a gillionare at this point?). How can we fix this? Well for starters, crafters could earn "respectable" amounts of SP from repairing fellow adventurers' gear. Maybe crafters could earn company seals or guild marks for meeting a "repair quota" that would reset every set period? Maybe they would get greater amounts based on the rank of the gear they're repairing.

Whatever they do, I still feel that if they can't make repairing "fun", then they should scrap it after awhile because right now it still feels rather superfluous.