These are just some of my thoughts in regards to Crafting and the some what lack of need for it in SWTOR and in general this is speaking from a PVE view point.

1. In any MMO crafting needs to play a major part in the game design. It creates a whole new side game apart from the daily Tank & Spank mob kill and quest/story line sequence.

To achieve this Crafting needs to be a worth while endevour for any one that wishes to pursue it and a another way to create wealth. The game designers did a great job in regards to the Crew Skill concept (needs some fine tuning) but in general I think the sytem is sound as it allows you to play while your minions grind away for you.

2. Generate an effective in game economy. All crafters SHOULD be able to sell anything that they can produce. Prime Example: Cyber Techs should be able to craft and sell their Speeders. I don't understand the point behind any crafter NOT being able to sell top line gear as that goes against any basic crafting principle and it would also allow those not into crafting to be able to purchase items from those that enjoy it. As it stands we have our own GFC (Galactic Financial Crisis) and this is due to the fact that commendation gear is better than crafted gear.

3. What this will cause is in a month or two once you have bought your skills, speeders, cargo hold and inventory upgrades, credits will be worthless because I can't think of anything left to spend credits on (not that I have completed all of those yet myself, but I know a couple that have)

4. Crafted gear should be the absolute best gear available in game, apart from maybe a very rare item from a Raid drop. This system of PVP commendation gear is fine I guess for the hardcore PVP servers, but it goes against the the concept of game play in a PVE server. To that end I play on a PVE server but I do enjoy PVP as well. My thoughts (PVE wise) are that the commendations should only provide either a schem or materials that can be used to CRAFT top line gear (ie the base item and any mods for items).

5. Failure. Item crafts should have a chance of failure when crafting or the very best schems should be Single Use. This would ensure that people need to continue to hunt for them and those items would actually have in game value, yet again creating an economy and the item would mean that much more to the individual if they put in the effort to get the schem and the craft was a success, conversely if it failed to craft and say 25% of the materails were returned instead it would give that person something to aim for again.

I am really enjoying SWTOR so far, but I fail to see the worth in crafting anything higher than a "Green" item whilst leveling cause in 2-3 levels you can craft a better one. So why waste time and effort REing to get the "Blues" and "Purples" because once you hit 50 and start grinding Daily PVP missions soon enough your gear is going to get replaced by the commendation rewards any way.

I know it's to late to do anything about it now, but hopefully in a future expansion when they raise the level cap they will change things around and give crafting the the importance it deserves as there is so much that could be done to make crafting an enjoyable part of this game.

I apologise for the post length.

What you are proposing is a crafting-centered game which isn't Bioware's philosophy. It's not "right" or "wrong", it's subjective.

If we want to be as objective as possible, the problem crafting has is that a few crew skills are drastically more useful than others in an end-game environment, and this stands true even after the Biochem/Cybertech nerf.