It's not like I don't understand the point you make and it's not like it is exactly a bad system, but I can easly see how someone like me would grow to hate that alchemy system... Now I agree that going to a node, pick up the glowing item is dumb, In my opinion nodes are right to exist they make gammy sense, no need to just make everything pickable and keep moving and picking up, easier to have a go there, gather as much as you like, this wastes less time of a player which is good. Gathering, whether you can pick as much as you want from a node or run around picking every flower you see is a chore at the end of the day so it's better to just have stuff that makes gammy sense in that respect.
The thing though is that every plant is pickable and there's an abundance of them, so wherever you go you see plants, and you can pick up enough of them without having wasted any time reaching your destination.
Now where this system becomes bad for someone like me is that what you so much love, no level ingredients is that yo need to make more stuff and need to experiment with stuff that grew in an area that you already finish... Go back there just to gather... Worse than wasting time in gathering, backtracking which is bad in and of itself, only to gather more. This means the chore just became even worse.
The point I was making is that the gathering system should encourage you to go back and get new stuff, if it doesn't then it's failed its purpose. The TES games are also very open and you will most likely go back to a place you've been anyway just to look for something new that you might've missed your first, second or third time around.
Let me tell you about the most awesome crafting system. it's incredibly simplistic and fits the game so well... If you ever played "summon night: a sword crafting story" then you know what I talk about... As you explore you find crates that drop stuff. Enemies you kill also drop stuff. You bring those items to the forge, you smelt them back into their basic components (which is only 3 types at first then a 4th is added) and you craft weapons from those basic components. the beauty of it is that you don't even need to purposefully grind enemies or levels to get more items to smelt because so long as you keep using only one type of weapon you'll always have enough. If you want to diversify then you need to start going out of your way to gather...
That's basically how this system works, if you want to. See, the alchemy system in TES is not tailored to one single playstyle, it works for basically all playstyles. If you want to just take the stuff on the road as you travel, you can and you will have more than enough to make your stuff. Because ingredients aren't leveled, they are all found almost anywhere in the world, given the environment allows the plant to grow there. So you will most likely encounter the same old plant no matter your level, no matter where you are.
This is an excelent approuch to a crafting system and it had to be done in such way given how the game completly revolves about you crafting the weapons you use to fight. At the same time there are no levels in the stuff you find since what you find is only to be smelted down to raw materials... As you go down into the labirint the stuff you start to get is just worth more total materials than in the beggining areas... What this ultimatly creates is a beautiful crafting system which does not disrupts game play with endless chores of gathering and backtracking.
That's different from TES, in TES no material is level based and no crafted items need more material because it's higher level. All potions take 2-4 (3 in skyrim iirc) ingredients no matter the level. The only thing that you get with use is what the ingredients do and how they can be used. This way you explore the crafting system to learn new things instead of going down a linear path of leather gloves -> metal armor, you learn by exploring and you are rewarded for it.
Of course I respect your point of view, you like to gather stuff and backtrack which is fine for you, but many people hate such things and thus a system like that becomes bad to them. The reason i like summon night crafting system so much is that it allows what I consider a total freedom. If you want to master crafting of every single weapon, you can but lots of gathering is required and the only reason to do so is because you want and feel it fun. If you want to specialise to one type of weapon and not have your gameplay disrupted by gathering chores, you can do that too.
No, I don't like to gather stuff and backtrack because the system is integrated in a way that it can be played no matter how you want to go about things. If you want to backtrack and gather everything, you can but you don't have to. I play my game like an explorer. I go around, see new stuff, try new things and wander about with like 10 unfinished quests in my log, I do what I want to do, and the alchemy system rewards me for that too because ingredients are everywhere (like everywhere). If you want to loot everything you see along your way to your goal, you can do that to. The point of the system is to reward all playstyles without any other interfering with how you play your game, just like I said in the last part of the tumblr post.
I recommend that you look up The Elder Scrolls, it's an amazing game series with loads of freedom.
