I personally enjoy randomness on the top end crafting, but they really need to solve the low to mid-end with some determinism. Delve league was a great baseline and instead of capping it at mid-end they nerfed it to the ground.
Trading is a horrible experience. They should allow people to set up shops and automate transfer of goods instead of needing to make a party, go to hideout, trade, go back. I know a lot of people want an auction house, but that tends to lead to other issues, so I think middle ground is a better solution.
I recently got back into it, and it's not that bad if you go in with the knowledge that you won't get a top tier item without investing an absurd amount of currency and with curbed expectations.
You can get some decent rares by limiting yourself to three or four mods items without spending too much and by offsetting your equip's shortcomings with your passives.
I think the main issue is that the game is balanced around trading, which lead to incredibly overpowered items and monsters... just yesterday I got oneshot through 8800ES while monsters where cursed with Enfeeble on my build from three or four years ago, in a lightly modded T9 map, by a Delirium boss, I think?, which is kinda nuts
I'm gonna go SSF next league without expecting to get to Red maps and see how it goes, but crafting doean't seem too bad now and this comes from someone who never crafted anything, always bought my equip