Hi there,
at the moment i have the feeling that crafting is getting more and more unimportant. With new PvE content the stuff crafters can produce are getting devaluated.
Here are a few suggestions / thoughts from me which might help to work against this tendency.
1) Please let crafters change the traits on items. To oppose misuse of this ability make it expensive and only available to master crafters with level 50 and only if you have researched the source trait on all item types of this armor type and all target traits too. Then make it worthwhile through the material costs. Like all the mats for constructing the corresponding item plus 5 pieces of the target trait enchantent. Or something like that...
2) Drops in PvE dungeones, trials, whatever and rewards from PvP should never exceed the blue quality. Upgrade to epic or golden quality should be a privilege of the crafters.
3) This one will get me a lot flames i guess... but anyway...
Stop the exclusively set drops from PvE and PvP! Crafters do the set crafting and only them. If you want to make these special items available through PvE or spending tons of AP in PvP then make it like this: Killing bosses will drop recipes / blueprints for the corresponding set item. A master crafter can learn this recipe / blueprint and then start crafting the explicit set item.
Make the whole itemization of PvE dungeons new! For example blueprints of certain sets A, B and C drop in AA and sets D, E and F drop in Hel Ra and so on. A could stand for a light armor set, B for medium and C for heavy... and so on.
Blueprints can be sold. And you could add that special ressources are needed for crafting which only drop in PvE content.
As a crafter you need to learn all the 7 different recipies / blueprints of one armor type to craft a whole set.
This is just a crude idea how this could work... i leave it to the crafter community to add ideas and i leave it to ZOS to never implement something like this.
Surly there are more actions to give crafters a pimp but at the moment crafting is getting more and more boring and there are no possibilities as a crafter to stand out from the rest. And with the rest i mean nearly every player in the game.
The actual crafting system leaves no room for crafters with high demand because every player can be more or less independent.
I am no care-bear and not close to a crafter by heart but even me i got all professions at 50, i researched all the traits (except the new nirnhoned - which is useless in my opinion until there are 9-trait sets coming), alchemy 50, provision 50 only with enchanting i am in the low 40 because it is / was a pain to level this.
With the recipe / blueprint system you can actually stand out as a crafter when you are one of the first who can craft new sets which enter the game by new PvE content or via PvP rewards.
And besides this... it would solve the problem of traits (see action #1) because the crafter could choose the trait when constructing the set piece.
Anyway... what i wanted to say - please give the crafting system some love! At the moment the system is no fun at all and it feels like the "unwanted stepchild" right after the PvP environment.
Maybe i overlooked an announcement but the only thing i saw out of the crafting department is the provisioning revamp. But that is not much...