There wasn't much shared in regards to the future of Crafting from the Live Letter (Not really surprised to be honest) however what WAS shared could have major implications on Crafting Progression and how Crafted gear is treated as a whole. I'll go ahead and list the changes here and share my thoughts on them, feel free to share your own if you like!

Some of my thoughts are pure speculation, take them with a grain of salt

In regards to Airship Exploratory Missions:
Q10: You mentioned that we could trade unwanted equipment we find for points, but how exactly will we be able to use these points?

A10: You’ll be able to use them on new flying mounts, materials necessary for new crafting recipes, red scrip materials, shards, materia, and more. You can also just desynthesize the equipment.

Thoughts:
Honestly I'm not surprised that DoW/M can now contribute to Crafting materials. This was a much needed change and provides benefits to both Crafters and DoW/M.

For Crafters, with a majority of the playerbase being Combat oriented it allows a much larger number of materials to enter the market at any time purely because more players have the ability to farm them. It also provides an outlet from Gathering for those who don't enjoy it or are burnt out but still want to Craft.

For DoW/M it provides a source of income that was honestly otherwise lacking. Being a couple months into the expansion anything a DoW/M could have farmed for gil has become cheap either through overabundance or lack of demand.

The part that intrigues me IMMENSELY though is the ability to trade for Red Scrip materials. This will drastically change the mindset behind the current Crafting grind and could have a huge impact on Crafting Progression, though how much will depend on which Red Scrip materials they're actually referring to:

If we're able to trade for Favor items (Ooids, Foxglove, etc.) it will not only allow Crafters without a max Gatherer to farm 2-Star trade-in items but also everyone else doing Exploratory Missions. This would allow a much wider range of players to contribute materials to 2-Star Crafting and would also bring some much needed bulk to the number of Favor items on the market for those who wish to buy them. The only downside to this is that 2-Stars would still be gated behind Crafting Scrips, which can be a good thing since it extends the amount of time it will take for inflation on 2-Star mats/gear to occur and 2-Stars will retain their value longer.

If we're able to trade for 2-Star sub-mats (Purified Coke, Dryad Sap, etc.) all of the above will happen, plus 2-Star Crafting would no longer be limited by Crafting Scrips and would be MUCH more accessible. I was skeptical that they would allow us to trade for straight 2-Star sub-mats as that would be akin to opening the floodgates to smashing Crafting Endgame, however after some thought I realized they're already doing this with Esoterics (Sort of, Void Ark weekly quest for Esoteric Upgrade items + Exploratory Missions dropping i180-i210 gear + Thordan likely dropping i205 weapons). Not only that, but they specifically mention red scrip materials. Favor items are not used as a "material" for anything and are closer to a token than a mat.

In regards to Crafted Glamour:
Q20: In a previous interview, Yoshida mentioned that racial gear might become dyeable, but how is this progressing? Also, would it be possible to make Allagan, High Allagan dyeable for glamour purpose?

A20: We’re planning to add this as a crafting recipe in the future.

Thoughts:
I'm both pleased and disappointed with this. I'm happy we'll be able to craft and dye glamour versions of gear that is still among the most popular in the game (Both for myself and the potential profit) but I'm disappointed they made no mention of when they would implement this.

The future of Crafted gear and Materia Melding is already being discussed in Thrustie's thread here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...afting-Melding

But for the sake of completion I'll leave my thoughts here:

In their explanation they specifically state: "It will not be possible to use advanced materia melding for primary stats on equipment created by crafters.". For those unaware, advanced materia melding refers to overmelds and does not include the 100% guaranteed melds which leads me to believe that we may still be able to meld a primary stat into one of the original materia slots on a piece of gear.

Also, they specifically mention "equipment created by crafters". Does this mean Raid/Tomestone gear can have primary stats overmelded? Is this just a poor translation or misused phrasing? Personally, I think it would make Raid/Tomestone gear even more worthwhile and would allow them to make Crafted gear more powerful but widen the gap between Crafted gear and Raid gear.

I think the removal of overmelding main stats is a good thing. I feel the massive benefit a player could get from overmelding (Primarily tanks) was severely limiting how strong SE felt they could make Crafted gear and this change would allow them to bring Crafted gear in line without there being as big of a gap between "A good alternative" and "Mandatory". This would also explain why they're making the Crafted gear stronger in 3.2 and why they aren't releasing new Accessories in 3.1.

Welp, those are my thoughts, take them with a grain of salt and feel free to share some of yours if you like!