The only items I'd like see changed to an extent are the recipes for food. It's a difficult thing to rank up with so many ingredients.

However I agree that if recipes for Haubs are dumbed down to "5 nuggets, 2 ingots, 2 cotton cloth bolts." well shit, son. If I wanted to play with blocks I'd go back to pre-school.
The complexity that's there, or might still be there in the future, isn't meant to make you want to hang yourself. It's also a nice way to subtly limit the amount of certain items in the market wards.
The one thing that does bug me about current recipes in regards to armour are the required DYED items. That just bugs the hell out of me.

Dying systems in the future, for either alchemist or weaver, would ideally take one undyed piece of armour, and several dyes (Leather, cloth alike) to make a coloured item.

Which is a better option than to kill synthesizing into 1 mat snoozefests. :/
Darkmatter! Now in various It-can-be-ANYTHING flavours! Leather dark matter, cloth dark matter!