Regardless of your position on the matter, you'd be hard pressed to argue that more people log into an MMO for the crafting than log in to kick monster butt. Yoshida-san has probably put the priority on making battle related content for just this reason.

The Materia system is pretty much targeted at crafters. It's not "content", per se, but it is a rather substantial investment in the non-battle classes.

I agree, as a gatherer, there could be more content, especially content of a social nature, but I also acknowledge that appealing to the greater proportion of the player base is important. Getting their content out the door in a timely manner is also important. I'm not sure if I'd want them to hold everyone else back just because I couldn't buy a chocobo as a pure non combat player. I'd still want to harass them about making it possible, though, in the next patch.