What does Golden Saucer impact in the rest of the game? How does doing something in Golden Saucer change what you do in dungeons or primal fights?
I don't think it's a matter of the Golden Saucer being "useless". Holidays in WoW were largely useless but I still enjoyed grinding them for stupid items.
The problem (if you could even call it that), for me at least, was that the Golden Saucer for boring after the first few days. Triple Triad seemed like nothing more than a card grind, tournaments get cheesed, and the mini-games weren't interesting for more than a few minutes. The only reason I kept going back was for mini and jumbo cactpots.
None of this is necessarily bad if that's what SE set out to do (that is, make the Golden Saucer a small attraction not meant to hold your attention for a while). It's just that I don't see the Golden Saucer is being the big attraction that a lot of people seem to see it as.
tl;dr: It's not that interesting to me. Doesn't mean it's bad.