I love the crafting system, but yes it needs to be faster. I like the idea of much faster part synths and about the same or slightly faster equippable item synths, since you usually won't be mass producing the latter and it should take a bit more effort.

It should also use materials in line with the item you're making. Yes, it's more "realistic" if you want to use the (somewhat dubious) lego analogy made earlier, but this is a game, and it's a bad game mechanic to have a synth basically lie to you about its required level. That'd be like an enemy that was level 10, but you needed to be level 30 to actually kill it because it has a single ability that will one-shot anyone at its actual level. Come to think of it, I've run into some of those in this game too..well anyway.

As far as it taking reams of effort to get max level...well, this game is very crafter friendly but it shouldn't be crafter-exclusive. I remember what a horror story it was in FFXI to get geared as I leveled because the vast majority of gear was crafted, and it often required you to do (VERY boring and tedious even by MMO standards) farming or the finite amount of BC/KS runs you could do for money. Crafters should be able to get by, but it shouldn't be at the cost of forcing everyone else to grind for huge amounts of time to be able to afford their items, especially since this game as a whole doesn't follow the usual MMO paradigm of being able to get at least somewhat level-appropriate gear from quest or mob drops.