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It appears that, even with the Remaster, crafting still sucks. How does an NPC do something in a few minutes or hours that a PC needs weeks or months to do. It doesn't make sense.
It's not a be-all-end-all fix, but what if you do the crafting at your level or the item's level, whichever is higher. It doesn't completely fix the system, but does make it better.
Not sure why the NPCs can craft faster than PCs, just because they can sell something that's in stock does not mean they are whipping up Striking runes in a few hours.
Also, not sure where the "PC needs weeks..." ect bit comes from at all, as that's only for the bonus discount after the craft is ready / done.
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I've got a L9 Alch w/ some crafting focus and my biggest gripe, the formula nightmare, was deleted in the remaster. They also added the "rush the finish" variant rule back in Treasure Vault, which does reward crafters monetarily with what is basically a 2x Earn an Income multiplier. With the caveat that they are making something they would have bought otherwise.
I understand the general expectations for crafting are akin to a money printer. That doesn't mean pf2e "should" do that.
Paizo managed to make a crafting system quite usable and dare I say "valuable" without that money printer problem, which is honestly great. I think in general it's fine that they are going to get complaints about pf2e crafting basically forever. That's just what outside expectations from other game systems will create, which cannot be addressed w/in pf2e itself.
I see nothing in the rules that implies that an NPC artisan can craft faster than a PC. For example, the Smith NPC has Craft +15, exceptionally high for a 3rd-level character but that is allowed on specialists, but it has no special abilities for Crafting, so we can assume that character follows the usual Craft rules.
The Gamemastery Guide under Marketplaces has a sentence about hiring an artisan to craft an item. The same paragraph is duplicated in the Remastered GM Core.
If a character’s level is higher than the settlement’s, that character can usually use their own influence and leverage to acquire higher-level items, as they convince shops to place specialty orders or artisans to craft custom goods, though it might take a bit of time for such orders to be fulfilled.
That "bit of time" can easily include the one-day setup time, plus the artisan taking additional days to save on raw materials.
Quoting the rules does not mean that I agree with them. The Craft activity is one of the rare cases where I think Paizo made a design mistake. I posted my own ideas at Remaster: Does batch crafting really save time? comment #89. My key sentence is, "And the rules are designed to prevent an abuse that never occurred." Ironically, the remaster changes permit the abuse while still penalizing the non-abuse use of Craft. My own houserules are in the next comment, but by the time I wrote them, my players had given up on Craft.
I think there are a number of largest asterisk*s in your crit-fishing take:
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One, the time investment of the non-crit attempt is lost and burned. To re-attempt and go fishing is to gamble a risk-reward with a significant but small, Lvl+1 reward. IMO, that's the complete opposite of abuse. Even by itself that's a wonderful quirk of emergent gameplay that's completely harmonious with the system around it.
A frustrated crafter getting a "Eureka!" success on their third attempt is something that many ttrpg systems would struggle to allow to happen naturally like that. And the "abuse" of a +1 Lvl discount is plenty small to avoid balance issues.
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Two is the other side of the Craft coin, Earn an Income.
Most of the time, any Craft could instead be Earn an Income (which can Crit w/ the same benefit!). In your Hat making example, it likely would have been "more optimal" to take the reg success, finish on the spot, and Earn an Income for the remaining available time. The catch with crit fishing is that the +1 gp amount has to be more than would have been gained from quick-finishing and then doing Earn an Income.
I've never seen a campaign wait for a crafter to finish a discount. Downtime is typically the limiting factor.
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Three is tied to #2, which is that Craft gp value is only mechanically realized upon the creation's actual use. For permanent items, this means the unfairly crit fished gp discount matters whenever the items passive or active benefits are invoked. For consumables, this means they must be popped for that gp value to have ever mattered, and only for that single encounter. Consumables 4x grouping means they benefit more from crit fishing* but also less, due to that difference of realization.
Meanwhile, gp in the purse from Earn an Income is generic and widely applicable.
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This is not to say that Craft crit fishing is not a thing, or that Craft is perfect or whatever, only that IMO crit fishing is not an expression of a broken system, and actually sounds pretty dang cool/thematic.
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IMO the #1 important "fix" to save Craft is a big old GM sign that says "The default assumed timeframe is XYZ, it is mandatory to adjust the craft time / Earn an Income chart to fit your adventure!"
#2 fix / houserule would be to break the Downtime / Adventure day / Travel day split. My GM is allowing my PC's Ring of Sustenance to award 1/2 downtime days, but the core idea is sound without the item.
Any Adventuring day, all trained Crafters get a, perhaps fractional, progress toward their craft. Any Travel day would either be a much larger fraction, or outright be a full Downtime day of Crafting.
This would be an outright advantage for Crafting Trained PCs. Which would be whole point. Might even scale the bonus time with Expert, Master, ect. The alternative to the "extra time" style of Craft buff would be some sort of + or improvement to the Earn an Income chart, which would be likely a pain in the butt and complicate some calculations.
Overall I do think there is a lot of elegance within the current design of Craft, but nothing's perfect.
Whatever improvements are chosen, they really need to contend with the fact that pf2e is a system that orbits around Adventuring days.
What sucks is the magical items loot and shopping. Restrict both using the GMG point 2 or a mid between 2 and 3 (3 = no magical items) and Crafting is the only way to have what you want.
The time is not bad, is the way to prevent to fill the world with magical items. And also makes players to chose what items they want to craft, instead just getting all of them, that could if there is no hurry at all, but probably will be more selective for items that could be outdated quickly.
What I introduced is a raw material collecting system. Retrieve materials from creatures and environment and if you refine them (currently requiring crafting specialization that can be got multiple times) the material cost is halved, that is the cost of refinement process.
Just use the creature and area level and the materials collected will be the same.
Also the time can be reduced if multiple characters work at it, if possible (usually up to 2 characters can work on any item). Each one makes its own roll to check their contribution to time reduction, so can combine characters with different proficiencies.
As option could require the proficiency requirement only to one character, that would be the main crafter, but not for the remaining supporting ones, as the work team would be directed by the main one.
What I like less is the consumables with that trivial simplification of using the same system but you craft 4 units. Currently I give the option to craft individually with the corresponding relative time used.