Current crafting is very similar to the old combat system in FFXIV - you have to focus just enough that you can't do much else while you're engaged, yet all you really have to do is repeatedly hit the same button. Why have something which is so utterly boring always demand your attention with prompts? We're just making stuff, it's never going to be that exciting no matter how much control you give players. Once the initial luster wears off it just becomes mildly annoying, you may as well offer an experience in which players must manually control their own breathing.

In my opinion synthing should be completely simple and the process mostly autonomous as it was in FFXI. The way of slowing people down and making it somewhat interesting should come in finding the right ingredients, not some gimmick just for the sake of making it 'different'.