I think the reason they decided to go "base gear -> enhanced gear -> dyed gear" as a stopgap is that they didn't want to add several more complex slightly different recipes for different versions of the base gear, when they could have the main recipe for the base gear and simpler adjustment recipes for the enhanced gear.

I didn't see the point of the OP at first; now I understand and agree that the "base -> enhanced" step isn't strictly necessary, but the fact that this is a stopgap to put something in place before they can readjust their item system to work the way they eventually want it to work helps me maintain patience with stuff like this that makes me scratch my head a little. I have a feeling - and admittedly, it's only a feeling, mediated by my faith in the current dev team - that they are forced to make a lot of locally suboptimal decisions by the cruftiness of the 1.0 system that they're working with. I mean, there's a reason they're pinning everything on a re-code of almost every major technical implementation of the system. ^^