Regardless its an MMO there is always tedious grinds involved the question for me is weather the reward at the end of the tunnel is worth it. Right now having a 50 craft is of immense value. Being able to materia your own gear is worth its weight in gold. And if you are complaining about the DOL portion being useless since you can buy it all, the new direction for DOL is HQ's. You can't buy any HQ mats from a vendor and the benefit's of synthing HQ gear from HQ mats is also very big from increased % on forbiden (about 3-5% incrase on 2nd meld and 2-3% on 3rd) and also the strait stat bonus which on accessories is pretty sizable (from 15STR/DEX/PIE(NQ) etc to 18STR/DEX/PIE(HQ)).

Also the mini game itself for HQ is EXCELLENT, as someone who spent a large amount of time going for HQ from go live till 1.20 the new changes feel solid. Its not a std spam anymore you have to really understand what gear to wear, what skills to use and when in the crafting process in order go get HQ on hard synths. The only thing I'd change with HQ is that you can't HQ w/o 350~ or more Q and the rate is so low until you hit the 600's it basically removes the chance at random HQ's while grinding. I like to get a nice bonus HQ when I spam out some basic stuff like making a few stacks of arrows and pop out 1 or 2 HQ's in the group. Unless you really work hard with NQ mats and get very lucky you don't get hq's by accident.