Crafting is fun!

[Joronas]

As to the whole objectively/subjectively bad? The two aren't related. People are *weird*. Fairly universally. Some people like some things, other people like other things. It's fairly safe to say that something can be objectively bad by almost every metric, and still have someone enjoy it. Some of them are the gaming equivalent of those who climb Everest for fun .. some of them just enjoy brutally punishing systems .. some of them just aren't experienced in other systems (or, for instance, ARR), so this being better then drop mats in box, take out item that has random stuff on it seems like a hugely wonderful progress.

Now ... the reasons why I would say crafting is bad:
#1 - there is nothing endgame that is not crafting related. Nothing that is competitive, interesting, or viable for use. It's not a case of "suboptimal" -- the ilvl spread for drops/tomes is a full 40. The absolute best crafted piece is 160. Law is so easy to acquire that it's trivial to have full 170, and takes only a little while for full 180. 5 weeks can get you full 190, with several 200 pieces.
#2 - Scrip tokens. Being able to craft 2-3 pieces a week, if you do full tokens, and gather full time (with 100% exactly the favors you need exactly the mats you need .. plus access to all the folklore items ....)
#3 - Specialists. Play with your hamster wheel! Whistle while you're doing it! Enjoy the RNG! Most of the abilities are lesser versions of existing abilities, with more RNG mixed in. The few that aren't are hyper dependent on RNG -- not just 50/70/80/90 ... but dependent on getting a series of 'good'/'excellent' or eat up the already extremely limited CP pool. Or both.
#4 - Serious community arguments. All related to the above. You have those who have crafted for ages, worked at leveling everything up .. call them the old guard. You have the people who are just starting, working on their first class ... and you have huge disagreements between them. Worst offender? specialist recipes, which I really hope don't get implemented (I'm old guard)
#5 - Too much uncertainty. Nobody knows what's coming next .. and most of us have had enough kicks in the teeth to not trust it. It's not generally 'looking forward eagerly for new content', at best it's 'looking forward with trepidation' going to 'looking forward with dread' and at worst ... 'not crafting anymore', because none of the changes implemented since 3.0 have been significant. Gathering got 1 that was helpful; but it wasn't a big change. It did make the system barely usable though.
#6 - It breaks the thriving interconnected market ARR had, where:
On one side, dungeons/raids provided mats directly and through seals and tomes, everyone could earn gil that way, gear was available for DoW/DoM that was, if not BiS, at very least competitive
On another side, gatherers built up mats which crafters needed, and purchased new gathering gear which helped them
On the third side, crafters bought and acquired mats and made gear for themselves and sold gear for others.

Everyone was able to participate and everyone benefited from it. With the lack of things to sell at the top end, this system is broken. It's become two separate endgames now -- DoW/DoM and Crafter/Gatherer ... not one system that interacts at the top level. And of course ... while you're leveling to 60, you get several full gearsets of HQ gear as quest rewards ... for War and Magic both. I think that's more insult to injury personally.