What if Crafting were actually hard?

[Misteyes]

I've always thought that higher quality should substantially boost XP, since it's probably the best way to make the system more meaningful but allow the "tune out" option. Getting higher quality is quite difficult but of course it would need to be a bit less luck based.

I would agree with this if "playing the game" rather than tuning it out actually increased likelihood of HQ. I haven't really noticed any difference between spamming enter vs. carefully playing on HQ. I'm probably improving my HQ chance from 2% to 2.2% or something, but it's not enough to notice.

The whole system needs to be replaced before there can really be any significant difference between tuning it out or playing.

I don't think tuning it out is healthy for the game at all. A game is something we play to have fun - if the game is so boring that we do things like watch TV to distract ourselves from what's going on in the game, something is seriously wrong.