I mean, there aren't a lot of players on a given server aside from at specific locations, so it's not common to run into people. But I don't think that the map is especially empty of placed content -- named locations and the like -- compared to past games in the series.

There are a few areas in the map (well, unless they've added stuff) where you can mostly dodge any created content, but you'd have to go out of your way to find them. There's a strip along the southern extremity of the map where you can travel almost the extent of the map without running into something. The far southeast doesn't have that much stuff (aside from a few important things, like the Scorchbeast Queen fight).

And I don't know what you mean by crafting being broken. Maybe things have changed between when we played it, but it felt more-or-less like Fallout 4 crafting to me.

Gathering certain plants en masse probably requires digging up a map of where they spawn, unless you want to go mushroom hunting in the woods (which I think was probably part of the intended experience), and those are a crafting item.

There are some scrap generators in the game, but I'd call them more-or-less a non-factor, since they only have a low rate of item generation.

thinks

Learning the recipe to craft certain items, like serums, has a high bar. I don't know if one would call that broken or not, but it's a difference from Fallout 4.

Some crafting components decay -- though there are perks to mitigate that -- but to leverage those perks, you need to keep the items on your person until you make use of them. I can see someone taking issue with the inventory system, which is a major place where the game places resource constraints on one, but I assume that that's not what you meant, if you were talking specifically about crafting.