But as it stands now there's still a market for things one gathers through killing. That point doesn't quite work. If you want something that you can only get via killing (let's say an Uncultured Pearl) you can just go out and farm it. Yet there are still people (and always will be) who either don't want to or haven't leveled a battle class and still want to craft that item.

Not many people really even like gathering as a class so it's not like everyone would magically have an R50 gathering class (or all of them for that matter). Gathering is an incredibly awful grind compared to any other class in the game, there needs to be some semblance of equality.

If you go out gathering for just 1 item it can be just as hard to get it as farming an item from a monster. Nodes have diverse drop tables and it can be hard to get the one specific item you're looking for, let alone enough of it to craft on. It already almost works just like monster drops, they just need to mess with some of the drop rates and things would be fine. It's not like other games where Node X only gives you one, maybe two different items.