I agree with OP. Random loot is bad when there is no grinding in this game. Its all finite resources, nodes/plants dont respawn, only metal 1H/2H can be broken down into components and etc etc which doesn't help in getting ingredients for crafting. Plus vendor items are randomly rolled out. I've done 2 playthroughs and my 2nd playthrough was horrible in that i had extreme difficulty in finding certain ingredients which hindered my crafting in addition to the fact that my 2nd playthrough i've done up an optimized build so i can tap on crafting only to realize i can hardly use it.
They should tweak it a bit, make certain items drop, have a fix inventory for certain items in vendor bag, respawn nodes/plants, make more armor/wep able to be broken down for ingredients or something along those lines. Respawning mobs is out of the question definitely, ppl gonna rage plus it kills difficulty of the game if ppl could just outlvl content.