Swan feathers should not drop from cutting down a tree more frequently than raw lumber. There should be an option to "look for feathers," "chop down lumber," and "gather nuts and fruit," to avoid pointless drops. Why are there not different nodes or options for different materials?
Will node locations start becoming random rather than their preset locations which can be easily abused by RMT and botters?
I want to walk up to a gathering node, as a Thaumaturge, and gather my crafting materials rather than switching to a botanist. It takes several minutes to switch my gear, skills, and traits, just to make my job a Botanist for something that should be instant. Are there plans or the possibility of this happening?
I have a discussion or .. suggestion to add to the question above. Basically, gathering should be nearly as simple as World of Warcraft (flame on fan boys). I want to walk up to a node, as a battle job, and just click it and grab my materials. There is nothing wrong with gathering this way. The current XIV system is ridiculous as each piece of gear takes 4-5 seconds to equip when your character suddenly disappears and then reappears. Even if a macro is setup, this macro takes itself 30 seconds to fully complete before you can begin the ridiculous hot and cold game which itself takes forever. The macros need to be instant and if I want to switch jobs I want it to take place in less than 2 seconds. Even better yet, have preset character equipment layouts that you can equip different gear for (which takes up NO inventory space if equipped, thus alleviating the need for 20 retainers and mules) and then when you go to a node, it automatically switches to that job.

Crystal and shard requirements are insane for crafting, are there any plans to SUBSTANTIALLY increase the amount of crystals and shards through gathering?
Will gathering be permitted without dismounting from mounts? If not, can this option be implemented... please.
Can gathering professions not share levequests with the rest of the levequests? While you're at it, make all the levequests mutually exclusive so that we can have 8 battle leves, 8 crafting leves, and 8 gathering leves at each reset.