I don’t buy tokens for mats, but I hear people say, “oh jeez I have to buy another token to craft something.” and that feels bad. But if they had to buy a token to purchase an Epic BOE they could empower than that wouldn’t feel bad. Most people don’t have have 1 toon who can gather the items they need.
Does anyone see what I’m getting at? This is the difference between in-game character empowerment design, vs. task orientated design which people historical relate to real life work.
So you do want a return to SL lego crafting then.
By the end of the first season of shadowlands, frustrated crafters on high pop servers were putting the base items (which each cost a minimum of 1500g in vendor components ALONE, not including the actual gatherable mats on top) on the AH for 150g just to get it to sell.
The problem with people is they will always undercut each other in the belief that it will shift their item faster, and people who only craft occasionally are always going to be willing to dump a thing they made at a loss just to get rid of it from their inventory space. Enough of those people, and the price of the item drops through the floor.
Once again: this way puts both the time investment and the financial risk entirely on the crafter. That’s not fun or fair, and most of us were very happy to move away from that system in DF for a reason.
SL legendaries were character empowerment design. You remember that one? That time was hell for crafting. It was the culmination of your so called character empowerment design, a huge pile of manure! Those rose tinted glasses are screwed on way too tight methinks.
No, the shadow lands system was a mat for an item, that you then had to forge.
This concept is a crafted EPIC boe, that then is upgraded by the purchaser simply by applying sparks/crests. You don’t take it to a forger, not an upgrade NPC. You gather the items and apply them to the item to raise its lvl.
This is 10x better than both the shadow lands system and the crafting table, for a customer.
I’m not seeing how this is functionally any different than shadowlands where you buy the base item and then empower it other than the part where you had to go to the imprisoned primus to empower it. Which isn’t actually any different from a crafter’s perspective.
I was ok with ores, herbs and even leather, but when they added it to cloth and enchanting mats they went too far. But this is far from the only issue. Just off the top of my head:
Drop rate on cloth, even with max knowledge, is abysmal. So bad in fact that you’re effectively forced to join a brain-dead “slaughter koviss” group at least once every week or two. You get vastly more leather, herbs and ore and know exactly where you’re getting it from.
Professions are notoriously uneven in difficulty and knowledge acquisition. Why for example is engineering only around 550 points to cap yet BS is over 800? Why do tailoring and LW body-specific nodes take 20 points but BS takes 25? Why do enchanting and BS require so many more profaned tinderboxes than other professions? Why is enchanting hard capped at 15 points per week with zero knowledge from orders yet other professions can yield 20 or more per week?
They got rid of the random items that you could turn in for knowledge that DF had.
Gross inconsistency with weekly knowledge from treasures. Nothing says “fun” like opening 27 chests or purple digging puddles to get your weekly cap.
Recipe acquisition is just all over the place. As a collector of recipes (every enchant and tailoring pattern in the game and working on BS and LW currently), it is beyond frustrating to have so many random drops from random sources or have the source known but the % is absurdly low. WoW has always been like this, but unlike many things they have put a QoL fix in for, this is still as lame as ever. The cooking recipe from Hallowfall from lighting the 4 braziers is a prime example. Do it weekly on six characters, no drop. Yes I could pay 40,000 gold or more, but that’s just dumb. It’s a cooking recipe. And let’s not forget putting recipes as uber rare drops from raids. Mmm that’s FUN… 
Go raid, kill the boss that drops your pattern, pray for the .1 to 1% drop, then pray harder you win the roll.
100% agree, that and orders should be region fillable not just server. If gathering professions have to compete against all servers, so should crafting professions.
There is just not much to do with engy really its always been the redheaded step child of profs in a fantasy sword & sorcery game. Lack of imagination or not wanting to add balance problems maybe. Could be argued that the last 5 KPs in each bs slots is the price to pay for free repairs for the rest of the exp… Once they are all filled that is. There is a very nice source for tinderboxes that frees you from buying it in AH also.
Some peoples did not like travelling all over the place I guess. And if I think of that porcupine mass murder spree of a q for enchanting ( I think it was enchanting), I am not sure I miss it.
Gotta replace the porcupines! Dirt pile were also uncooperative in DF. There is no shovel this time at least!!
There is NO lariat this time around! That has GOT to count for something! There is also the AA chanting bags. Tis another source at least, no rolls aside from the rng baked into it.
Gotta understand something, all those frustrations you listed are pretty much meant to keep you subbed. They balance it just enough for you to keep going for that carrot, and not enough to make you give up and stop wearing the stick. Hmm that metaphor needs work.
This sounds exactly like the shadowlands system. The crafter makes an item; the buyer takes it away and empowers it using items gathered elsewhere. Quibbling about semantics is irrelevant - the Shadowlands system was infamously disliked for a reason.
Also, please don’t use your alts to like your posts to astroturf your argument - it’s very transparent; they have the same battle pets and achievements as you do. I am debating you in good faith, please extend me the same courtesy.
The new crafting system’s biggest failure was that it wasn’t integrated into the existing Auction House system and that players can’t post “purchase orders” for people to fulfill.
The Auction House can’t handle Soulbound things.
The entire point of the new crafting system is to allow people to use their Soulbound components to have top-end crafted gear made, even if they don’t have the relevant professions.
There’s a direct line from the old crafting system, to the crafted soulbound stuff in BfA, to the Shadowlands legendaries, to where we are today.
And anybody who’s been crafting the last 10 years, knows it.
Since like idk maybe 15 years ago I always thought crafting should have been like, you get the recipe for a piece of armor, then what stats it has depend on the mats used which they sort of have to a degree now I guess, but only when they would otherwise be random. Like if you were on a warrior and wanted some tank legs, you would get your metal bars, and a bunch of other mats that would give more tank stats (like say elemental earth kind of ones) where as if you wanted to make paladin healer legs, you would still use the ore for the base plate legs, but you use other mats to get healing stats (like elemental water or whatever). And obviously a mat a raid boss drops would upgrade it to epic, where as a mat a dungeon boss dropped made it rare, etc. you get the idea.
That’s exactly how crafting works now, with missives.
I guess I should have clarified, with less restrictions. I should have the option to make stupid meme gear, change the looks based on mats,etc.
That would be dyes. We are not there yet. Can live in hope, but we aint there yet.
With transmog in the game and thousands of items to choose from, I don’t think that will be coming.
If gold didn’t exist I would be playing FFXIV if I played any MMO at all. Unless they added something so you could earn playtime inside the game. I’ve spent well over $2500 in blizzbucks and gametime since the token came out, which wouldn’t have gone to Daddy Blizz if I had to use real money. Not everyone views gold as an evil. 
Non-integration with the AH isn’t the biget problem. As others have said it before:
The problems I see with crafting are:
You can’t max out your Profession level solely from your trainer any more. That’s just frustrating.
You need to use Artisan Acuity to make high level items, but you also need to use it as a currency to buy the ability to make high level items.
What you make (as in armour and weapons) quickly become obsolete by Dungeon/Raid/Delve loot.
Hopefully, with player housing on the way, things will improve next expansion.
Dual crafting toons are the fastest at getting AA what the hell do you mean??