Well, I guess I missed where you questioned all of the things it can do, so I'll address those first.
(1) Save you money or make you money. - How does this save ME money? Why am I buying magic armor? Make money, I'll buy, but, then again, I can do this MUCH MUCH easier without blowing feats.
How does this feat save you money? Okay, let's say you have a Fighter in the party that wants a new +2 sword, and he's willing to pay for it. That's 8,000 gold. You can make it for 4,000 gold. You tell him you'll make it, and you'll sell it to him for 6,000 gold. This saves him 2,000 gold, and you make 2,000 gold. This happens to any suit of armor or weapon for every barbarian, bard, rogue, fighter, cleric, druid, etc. in the party. You end up saving a ton of money for you and your party. If you enchanted a weapon all the way up to +10 (+5 Vorpal, say), you'd make it for 100,000 gold. Over time, the Fighter is gives you 150,000 gold (but it's worth 200,000 gold), saving him and making you 50,000 gold. And that's on one item. In D&D 3.X, where magical items are so often significantly tied to character power, you're going to give a noticeable boost to party power. So, yes, the feat certainly makes you money, and that's if you don't use it for anything besides discounts for party members.
I mean, if you want to be overly
pedantic it rarely saves you money, but making it is just as good
(2) Outfit your party. - How does this directly benefit me? Indirectly, sure, I get that. But directly?
I'm not sure how accomplishing your goals isn't directly helping you, but we can call it indirect. I mean, you counted Leadership as direct, but that's a feat that allows an outside force to help you, and this is functioning in the exact same manner.
(3) Outfit your allies. - ditto
Ditto.
(4) Make you new allies. - How does this feat do this in a way that other feats will not?
Creating a magic suit or armor or sword as a gift to an important NPC is going to go over a lot better than using Quicken Spell is a lot of the time. With Craft Arms and Armor, you can make a business arrangement for crafting things, you can give gifts, you can upgrade gear that others couldn't, and so on. If you handle these interactions well, you can certainly make allies with the right people.
(5) Make you new contacts. - How does this feat do this in a way that other feats will not?
Again, Quicken Spell isn't really helpful for this. However, if someone hears you're capable of making a +5 weapon, you might very easily be sought out for your skills. Or, more proactively, you can break into the crafting market, and attempt to get well-known for your skills, and the crafting market is obviously going to be flush with rich people, as magic items are expensive.
(6) Give you political pull. - How does this feat do this in a way that other feats will not?
Quicken Spell isn't nearly as good as making a +5 sword for that king. Or making a cursed item, for that matter. Saying you'll make a weapon, but only if the guild leader does
X is definitely using it for political pull, and you could potentially do this to people more powerful than you. That cleric king might be level 15 in this campaign, and I might be level 12, but I can make +4 weapons and armor and he can't. I can definitely aid his church, but if he wants my help, he's going to have to help me, too.
(7) Give you items otherwise unattainable (low magic setting, not on the market, etc.). - Why would I want these items when I cannot use them?
For any of the above reasons (where their value is compounded), or to have a chance of using something otherwise out of the hands of the world. For example, the Sorcerer in my campaign used a magical spear, and he would engage with low level orcs and so on using it to conserve spell power (while the high level fighters mopped up). He wasn't great with it (half base attack and a 10 Strength), but he was still getting +7 to attack rolls. Against dangerous opponents he used his spells, of course, but against a low level orc, he wanted to be able to do enough to drop an enemy, and a simple shocking spear can do that for him.
Why would you want them? To fulfill a concept. "
In a world where magic weapons are a rare and powerful thing, I'm one of the few that has the power to make them." Not only does this
directly help fulfill your concept (be one of the few that can create magical weapons), it
directly helps him create magical weapons or armor. This seems like a very direct benefit for him, and at least as direct as Perform (Dance) or Leadership.
See, I don't really distinguish "useless" from "mostly useless". Anything that comes under either category gets tossed in the "bad design" bin for me.
So, yup, a feat that actually provides no direct benefit for the taker, and only allows me to spend yet more character resources helping other people is a bad feat.
I'm still curious how the feat is "near useless" when it can provide all of the above benefits. Even if you discount the benefits as not "direct" for whatever reason, it provides massive benefits within the campaign if used judiciously.
Funny thing is, I like playing support characters, so I often took this feat. But that's the difference. I don't feel that just because I happened to be able to take a bad piece of mechanics and run with it suddenly makes it a good piece of mechanics. I'd much rather judge it on an objective level than simply say, "Well, I made it work, so, it must be good".
I say, "it worked well for my players, so it must not be bad." It wasn't good enough for me, or I would have kept it. However, if it works well for the players, and they use it to great effect, why is it classified as a bad feat?
A question does occur to me though. Just how much money were you throwing at your groups that they could afford to create magic items just to use as bartering tools? I mean, if the group can actually do this, they are likely pretty far beyond the wealth by level guidelines at any given level. Dropping a couple of thousand gp's on a gift is a pretty major expense for any single digit party.
Well, not really. Most of the party's wealth was given to them as gold, gems, and the like, not as magic items. They got sprinkled with magic items here and there, or sometimes got a big haul, but mostly the party was finding valuables outside of magic items. So, they grabbed a couple crafting feats and went to work with no hesitation. They knew it was a low magic setting (it started as a no-magic setting), so they were fine with it (I had player buy-in before the campaign started).
Basically, if you're following the wealth by level guidelines, and you spend 50% on most of the party's items, you can end up saving quite a bit of money, which you can funnel towards various projects. The cleric built a church (and then convinced several nations to pay for more) and invested in trade caravans to support his church, wife, and family. The sorcerer started a magic school, paying for it to be built, looking for students, hiring teachers, and so on. The Fighter ended up becoming a king, but as a Lawful Good character, didn't use the tax money on himself (he might borrow every once in a while, but it was either repaid or the object he purchased belonged to the nation), so political dealings with any number of people were used with him (including hiring old allies or adventurers to deal with problems, which is making new allies or contacts).
Like I said, over the course of over 2,000 real time hours playing this campaign, it lasted almost 70 years in-game, so the party had plenty of opportunities to make allies, bribe people (the Lawful Good fighter preferred to think of it as "coaxing" them), make contacts, and so on.
However, like I said, because of the massive amount of money they were rewarded, and because of the massive amount of money they saved by crafting items, they had a lot of money to throw around at special interest projects. Yes, the Cleric and the Sorcerer ended up one level behind the Fighter, but nobody complained, because everyone felt useful. Not a single one of them felt like they couldn't hold their own or pull their weight.
And, this is in a game where I houseruled experience, and everyone always got the same amount. By RAW, the Cleric and Sorcerer should be getting more XP each session, until they catch up. So, by RAW, they might have ended up in the same level (or close to it), but I didn't use the rules, so that didn't happen. In a standard D&D game there would be even less gap. They certainly would have had even less reservations about making magic items, and would have had more to craft and throw around.
