Key 2.x Crafting recipes and how they were throttled:
  • Adventuring gear suitable for entry raiding was available for crafting.
    Adventuring gear was throttled by raid drops.
    BIS Foraging gear was available for crafting.
    Foraging gear was throttled by daily quests
    BIS Crafting gear was available for crafting.
    Crafting gear was throttled by daily quests.
    Glamour gear was available for crafting.
    Glamour gear was throttled by raid drops.

Key 3.x Crafting recipes and how they were throttled:
  • Adventuring gear suitable for entry raiding is available for crafting.
    Adventuring gear is throttled by weekly crafting hand ins, and weekly foraging drops.
    BIS Foraging gear is essentially NOT available for crafting.
    BIS Crafting gear is available for crafting.
    Crafting gear is throttled by weekly crafting hand ins, and weekly foraging drops.
    Glamour gear is available for crafting.
    Glamour gear is throttled by rare chest drops.

Now if you look at the old 2.x system and ask what some of the typically quoted problems were you would see why some of the 3.x changes were made. Two of the most important problems which were highlighted:
1) Crafting was primarily gated by adventures raid drops and daily faction rewards.
2) Forager gathered material was low priced, over abundant and was not the major cost in most gear.

Now considering the above you can understand now why SE moved us to a system focused on forager drops and crafting weekly token rewards as the primary throttle/gates for crafting gear. This was the logical choice. But there are some MAJOR problems with this change:
1) All raid/adventuring gear is now gated by crafter AND gather tokens. This means that adventures must both craft and gather for the same gear to be generated which was available by the 2.0 raid drops. This is terrible because people who adventure have NO DESIRE TO DO THIS. Consequently the cost to produce adventuring gear is too high. And this is causing crafters to have no viable reason to produce half our recipies.
2) Because adventurers no longer have any drops to sell to crafters, they get no gil from crafters!!!
3) Adventures no longer have drops to buy from crafters (since we can't viably produce 2 star adventuring gear) so they no longer have any reason to pay crafters!!!
4) Generating red crafting tokens requires 1-2 million worth of equipment to be handed in each week.
5) Because of the cost very few crafters can actually participate in red scrips
6) Generating red gathering token items requires a massive time investment by foragers.
7) Because of the time investment tokens are rare and cost considerable money.
8) Almost all foraging gear is not available for crafting. This means crafters have nothing to sell foragers... even though we are potentially paying them massive amounts of money for the new red scrip crafting drops.

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So from the above problems its clear to me there is no immediate simple solution. One of the biggest problems has to do with who is participating in 2 star crafts. Because adventures are not contributing material and getting gil from their material, they are not going to have gil to buy the high priced items. Likewise Foragers have nothing to buy. So this leaves crafters as the only ones participating in purchases for the new 2 star market. This in itself is really screwed up.

Likewise because of the costs of generating red scrips is so high very few crafters are actually able to generate the scripts. This again is TERRIBLE.

Finally even if enough crafters can and are willing to generate red scrips, gathers can't generate enough of the token materials fast enough for crafters to keep up. And this is for just a miserable 9 intermediate materials per WEEK. This is because each material requires 20 freaking rare tokens!!!

Finally because of the above problems smart crafters know without sales to adventures or foragers, we simply cannot afford to pay for red scrips AND pay for super rare materials. So most of the crafters left participating in the system are simply doing all the gathering themselves.

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As folks have seen the result of all the problems with the 3.0 2 star system is:
A) Massive market stagnation of 2 star goods
B) Unavailability of 2 star goods
C) The player base participating in 2 star goods is probably less than 1%

If you compare these exact problem to the old 2.x system you'll find they didn't exist! Why? Because everyone was participating in the system, due to raid drops. And the quest throttling didn't cost money and gave faction rewards (which non crafters would often want to complete). Likewise the daily faction reward and raid drops put money in adventures pockets making them feed money back into the current X star economy. Foragers certainly got the short stick, but they still were able to make some money gathering necessary parts.