You are making a choice to compete "with other players to amass wealth to gain more power". Not everyone plays the game that way. In fact, a minority does. This isn't the goal of the game, even though you might think it is. By choosing that goal, you limit yourself in how you can approach certain mechanics inside the game, even though the game gives you a lot more choices, and most system inside the game support that complexity.
GGG could force a specific type of gameplay onto you, both mechanically speaking and narratively, but they don't. The "everyone plays the speed meta and just amasses currency" meta is in your head, not in the game. Sure, some people play the game like that, but to what end? To have fun? People have fun in different ways. People reach uber-elder in different ways. People hit lv100 in different ways.
PoE gives you the freedom to choose whatever the fuck you want, and then hands you tools to accomplish those goals. Syndicate as a temp-league complements that design decision. You can go for the maximum currency profit, but that's not really fun and compelling gameplay for the majority of the playerbase. Instead they give you dozens of tools to craft items, improve your atlas, or just flip items by increasing their value through white sockets/quality improvements etc. All of which have their own reward, have tangible effects on individual character progression that goes beyond amassing currency and ultimately give you more than one choice - all of which I'd consider good design.
That's not playing the game, that's bringing an otherwise fast paced action RPG into a grinding halt, if you choose to get the most out of it. It doesn't mesh well with the type of game that PoE is.
I guess those 1-2 seconds it takes to recall/look up what each member does per branch really "grinds the game to a halt". I guess we're just playing different games then, because for me that barely takes any time at all. If you don't know what each member does, this late into the league, you might wanna reconsider your approach to being "the fastest/wealthiest" and actually learn the game mechanics you seem to be complaining about.
The consequences here are inferior loot to superior loot. Syndicate members have places where they are best suited for maximum gains and while others can have mediocre placements, some are just clearly gimping yourself. If you like the choices to be between "do I screw myself over or not", then, yeah, not really into that myself.
As I already mentioned, members like Vagan or Janus certainly need a buff, but most other members have multiple good spots you can put them in. Only other member who really only matters in a single branch is Vorici. And you can still choose between farming a specific branch, or farming multiple ones, which changes what members you put into which branch.
In a single player game it matters less as you may pick a choice that interests you narratively, but in an online game where you are competing with other players to amass wealth to gain more power to progress it becomes a different matter entirely. If the consequences were more even then it'd be a less of a problem.
Again, that is your way to play the game, I think most people would disagree with your definition of "the goal of the game". If you really only care about amassing wealth and gaining more power, what are you doing playing non-Delve content anyway? Because Delve still is by far the most profitable game-content and it doesn't even have syndicate members.
. This is what you actually believe. Building up mastermind intel and killing the big boss is what the entire Syndicate mechanic builds up to. It shouldn't take a high IQ to understand this.
