I believe the game is heading in a terrible direction.

Ifrit drops must be stopped in their tracks. This is very bad decision Yoship. You should reward people for killing a very difficult monster, that is understandable, but you need to reward crafters at the same time. Horns, leather, crystals, anything but a bunch of already crafted gear. What is the point of crafting to level fifty if everyone is going to simply use Ifrit gear?
FFXI had a perfect system in place where crafted gear and elite drops were side by side. Why would you not use something that makes hardcore raiders AND hardcore crafters happy?

The crafting recipes have been simplified because novice players had a hard time? That's absurd. If they are novice, they will eventually learn. Why in the world did you make crafting so simple? On top of the simplicity, leveling has become extremely fast to the point where low level gear is useless. Now you have a simplified system that isn't needed anymore because people are hitting level 50 in no time, killing Ifrit in no time, and getting gear that far exceeds anything you can make; in no time.

The problems FFXIV suffer from are not related to the crafting system. They are problems such as poor performance, delay between player interaction, minimal content, UI, and all those things that have been repeated a thousand times over.
If you're trying to make another carbon copy of WoW, I will invest my money elsewhere. I already played WoW, LOTRO, and Rift. I even played the ancestor of these games, Everquest. ToR is doing the same thing and it seems you're trying to follow. How unfortunate.