There have been a couple of mentions in recent days that changes to the crafting system are forthcoming.
First, lead designer Tom Potter said in TabulaCast 28 that "[crafting] is not on the back-burner." There may be a new crafting system prototype in place when Deployment 11 hits the Public Test Server. The new system would do away with the engineering skill set that the current system uses and have modification bonuses based on character level. Tom called it "a more streamlined system than what we currently have".
Then, in an interview at Ten Ton Hammer, producer Starr Long said, "We are working on a prototype of the [crafting] revamp for internal testing and evaluation for the end of this month. Our goal is to get a 'better' crafting system to the players within the next several deployments."