I don't really understand why people want the world to be a barren empty wasteland again, I for one really like seeing the bears and would be happy if their aggro range was increased. Living bears basically don't aggro even when you boop into them with a car, their aggro range is so small.
More things moving in the world = more things to see and interact with
It's Skyrim with Mods vs Breath of the Wild, I hated BoTW because it was just 50 miles of empty plains and trees with like 3 enemies per square mile. I like the forests being full of deer and bears and wolves, and the meat is nice since cooking was basically a meme before.
You can't make anything worth a crap with just meat, but it's the base ingredient in everything, so having lots of meat means chefs can actually use their perks to make food, and people without chef perks are still walking around starving, wasting 150 meat a day on grilled meat / charred meat so they can fill half a hunger bar up.
Mad Mole was right that food is some of the best healing in the game. The high end food heals more than pain killers and healing bandages do. A LOT more, stuff like Sham Chowder heals like 80 health, so people who don't invest in healing perks don't get healing food either.
The changes I'd want are actually for bears to be more aggressive so they can be early game bosses that make you change your play style and run away screaming, and for schematics to get nerfed. Every single item in the game shouldn't have a schematic. Basic food like Grilled Meat and *maybe* Bacon and Eggs should get schematics, but the higher tier foods should be perk only, so there's more reason to actually pick the perks
Screenshoot please, because i compared some items of same tier and they had all the same stats? Is it an old world?
I don't have the example armors on me since I sell the bad ones, but next time I get some I'll take a screen shot. It happens a lot for me, almost every piece of armor I get will have 1-2 point difference armor values even if it's the same level. I actually went from Level 6 Steel Chest to Level 5 Steel Chest because it had 2 point higher armor value