Yes and apparently to Rinoa too but i can't see a major difference
I'm barely using GFs at all this time but i did used to use them on previous playthroughs. A nice idea for the remaster might have been to introduce a 'hard mode' where GFs can only be used once per x amount of battles and where top magic can't be accessed until late in the game. I'd completely forgotten that tents can be refined into curagas at the start of the game
A hard mode would delete card mod and re-balance the game so enemies scale with your stats instead of just your level, they would also have to change location of a lot of items.
GFs are largely pointless power-wise to use in battles due to how many ways you can break the game.
You can level Seifer (alone, kill the others) to 100 and get dragon skin early alongside firaga, thundaga, blizzaga and curaga during the dollet mission. (and level Quezacotl, Shiva and Ifrit to max if you want)
Magic wise you can get best in slot or close to best in slot for most things before leaving for Timber.
Quistis ultimate weapon can be gotten before even doing Ifrit alongside great blue magic like bad breath, mighty guard, degenerator and shockwave pulsar.
All ultimate weapons are available from disc 1 apart from Irvines Exeter.
The game is easy to break if you know how, but where others see it as a negative i see it as something that is available in all of the popular FF games and something I quite enjoy.
And this is just the tip of it, and excluding refining the special cards which you could do to get stuff like maxed triple magic.
I love this game!