"Credit for the first part goes to u/Bowtie16bit on reddit. I will be copy and pasting what he had originally written as his idea to revamp and revitalize gathering in a way that's interesting and incentivizes exploration beyond just a handful of viable gathering spots (gets stale...)

THE GATHERING LIFESKILL REVAMP

Part 1: There are gatherable objects (rocks, trees, herbs) all over the world; some in very obscure locations. Allow the quantity and rarity of anything harvestable from these nodes to increase over time until they are harvested, then the timer starts over and node begins going up in value again. Think of the tree or rock or bush way out there, on top of a mountain or in a valley nobody visits, or a desert far away. Those could be nodes nobody has ever gathered from since the launch of the game; opportunities await!"

Part 2: Its been mentioned before and seems to be a popular idea but for the love of goodness, enable ALL (or almost all) rocks, trees, herbs, etc to ACTUALLY be gatherable. For whatever reason there are gatherable objects that share the model for that specific gatherable object (rocks, herbs, trees) but they aren't actually able to be gathered. What's more, in the map database you can clearly see they exist as gatherable object but yet in game they actually aren't. Making all resources actually gatherable would almost single handedly revamp gathering and create countless more viable gathering rotations all around the world. Its a shame we have this rich game world but only a handful of gathering spots worth the time...

example of gatherable objects in the database, using Feldspar as an example: 

Looks rich! Except...when you actually get in game...at MOST 50% of these feldspar objects are actually mineable...(probably closer to 30%). Now if they WERE actually gatherable, youd have a TON more gathering rotations scattered all across the world (instead of literally just Pilgrims basically).

Lifeskills and Gathering need love PA! Its an entire pillar of this game and really adds to that sandboxy feeling.

Sounds nice but the thing is PA designed the game(the way it is) so we can interact with each other. I think that's the reason we have few viable gathering spots. How much drama Behr has created over the years? You are bound to have bad experiences but also good ones and when that happens it sticks. You might even make a friend or learn something. Most places are pretty chill nowadays at least on EU side.