I would love to answer this, but since its been bugged for me since day one, I can't. Have a feeling a lot of folks won't be able to comment for the same reason.

Fair enough, but at this point the crafting is so basic & incomplete that I think discussing it in any detail is premature.

May I suggest that whilst trying to avoid semantics, where anything is technically a discussion, it would be helpful to remember how much of this is speculation and thus subjective. Also that before any other unfortunate comment is made I have watched the video and, that I have repeatedly successfully crafted items for more than one character.

The crafting system that the players are currently aware of, would appear to be the most basic of 'place holders'; this may also extend to a lesser extent to the inventory function. The following observations form the basis for my assumption.

In the video comment is made about the limited ability to select and salvage items and, how 'AH' uses it to store gear that he may want to use on his character. - At this time one cannot access the inventory when on a mission, so when it can be accessed it performs the same function as the chest on the command bridge. However, the chest is accessible account wide ( a point that I will raise again later).

Comment is made about alternative ways, that have been used in other games to speed up the 'processing' of an item once it has been selected. However, the existing method does remove the need for a 'confirmation' button to prevent the over enthusiastic player from deleting their prize piece of gear (and, conceivably a number of threads by some of those people wanting some form of a form of safeguard added, lol) Additionally  I find myself wandering if the existing method requires less coding.

Whilst the unusual use of left/right clicking and, material layouts are valid observations in themselves, it should be noted that there are numerous tabs across the top of the screen that cannot be accessed indicating that at least it is envisaged to be a more sophisticated system and, there are 3 different qualities of materials of which we can currently only select the basic variety at the moment.

Currently and, to state the obvious this may change, the available choice of gear that can be crafted is account wide, so the 'low level' character can commission the same variety of items as the higher level character.

Before watching the video personally I could see no valid reason for crafting to take time. However, whilst I think the use of the word economy could be misleading, I can see how it helps to create a sense of achievement when creating gear with the ideal combination of bonuses due to RNG. But, as indicated above, all gear can be used by any character on the account. So once a useful piece of gear is created, it can stored for later use by any character. Indeed it is possible to create a level 1 character and equip him with all purple gear so his attack/defence value is in excess of 66 before he even takes his first mission.

The current crafting system is thus I would suggest little more than a place holder, with many indications that it is or was at its creation destined for far greater sophistication. So, until it has been developed further, maybe any suggested improvement at this staged should be tempered by acknowledging how much speculation that is based upon. 

Meaningful forum discussion is often something different from one person's opinions in a Youtube video. Though if that video attracts more attention to the game, which in turn sells more copies and, brings in revenue that is spent on development of it, then in addition to any other personal objectives, it serves a constructive purpose for the game.

Thank you Hydra for another interesting video! 

 I have to say that I do see the validity of the points you raise, but to be blunt what I ended up thinking about is that we're at a point right now where we are kind of stuck. It's nearly mid-April and the next patch is nowhere to be seen still, and although I do get that development takes a lot of time, some meaningful communication of where development is at at the moment, would be nice. Also your video brings me back to a point I've made before: the devs have a tool in us, one underutilized at the moment, in my opinion. We should know what is a placeholder (apart from the obvious items that are marked as such), what is merely there for the alpha and what is closer to done already, so we can focus on play testing the bits that are closer to being complete. 

The crafting system seems to have potential, although I believe it does need some quality of life alterations could be made to it. For instance the right clicking of materials to add them to a recipe, when on the recipe list is clearly indicated that you can make an x amount of said item, could be streamlined for the lower tiers by having the system auto select the basic materials needed to make the item. Further down in the game -and if the option to swap lower tier materials in recipes will indeed be there- it could give you the option to swap the lower tier mats for higher tier ones and get different roll modifiers or add material specific bonuses to the end result, as it seems that specific stat picking is limited to specific recipes (the ones that can be found as loot in game). At least that's how I am getting it, and I know I may be way off here, cause much of this is speculation anyway. 

I certainly don't mind the whole thing (although I got the irretrievable item bug as well) but it looks like a system that could be easily overlooked by many in the final game, given the other avenues already provided to the player for getting loot (Uther's Tarot, loot cases, chests and drops from enemies), and become obsolete by the endgame.  But again this is judging from the current state of the game, and without knowing whether the things we spend so much time talking about are to be scrapped all together for something else later down the line.  

True enough, but I don't believe it's appropriate to go into ength about the craftsmanship at this stage since it's so fundamental and unfinished.