I don't think it's just the scrips that are turning me off crafting and gathering, it's the scrips plus all the other changes they've implemented.

I started playing just as HW dropped and I loved the system for crafting and gathering in ARR. I did notice a few large threads on this forum complaining about HW crafting but I was having so much fun levelling my DoH in ARR, I largely tuned that out.

Now I know why people were unhappy. HW crafting and gathering has generally been an exercise in frustration. The increase in materials needed to make things, levelling materials on hidden nodes, other levelling materials on timed nodes, timed nodes being up for such short windows, all made getting the materials to craft harder and far more time-consuming.
DoW all get HQ as quest rewards, so most of the things I've made while levelling have gone to npcs and only a few items have been sold to other crafters and gatherers. In ARR I made a lot more items for myself, my friends and the Market.

The Red Scrips, which I am just getting to now, are the icing on the cake.
The cap effectively prevents newer players like myself from catching up. I guess if the idea is to discourage 'casual' players and make max level crafting and gathering something that only a dedicated few can master, then the system is working well. It doesn't seem like they want or expect a large number of people to be doing this.