Your last point is spot on. The time theft is absurd. I spent all this time setting up a custom experience, that I now can't use. Time that I put up and took down a server repeatedly the first day the game was out to get the settings right, when the feature actually worked for me. Time spent sifting through servers made by other users, clicking on a server to view its map rotation, seeing that it's only 1 map over and over again, backout out of that, only to have the game completely reset the filters I just set up. It's so frustrating and such a waste of time that I've gone to play other games for the most part.
And I'm not even setting up a 1v32 "bot farm" or giving players boosted health or anything. My server is default settings for the most part, with a custom rotation, a few gadgets disabled that I find annoying, and bot backfill so it's not empty when there aren't as many active players. My Rush server is up fine; I just can't host Breakthrough or Conquest, and Breakthrough is the mode I most wanted to play.
And finally, maybe people wouldn't feel the need to "XP Farm" if they hadn't made the weapon unlock system so nonsensical or the attachment unlocks such a grind. For weapons, why do you have to get to a certain level to even unlock the challenge to get the weapon? Make it one or the other, the weapon is either unlocked when reaching a certain level, or you have to do a challenge to get it. As for weapon attachments, someone on Reddit said you have to get 3000 kills to max a gun out. In BF4 you needed I think 300 kills to unlock everything for a weapon, but certainly no more than 500.
"XP Farming" is not a term recognized by any Court anywhere. It is not even a thing. It is a device used to intimidate.
