Damn, I love exploring the environments and collecting herbs, even mapping out were the good ones are to pick up more later. That is part of being a Witcher and the new system seems more like Far Cry or Assassins Creed in which you gather parts to upgrade. That combined with the whole recommended potions thing has me a bit miffed.
What recommended potions system? As I wrote in my summary of Polygamia's interview, you can unlock the mosnter information only by doing research/investigation. So it's not like the Monster Hunting screen will show you recommended potions automatically. If you don't manage to gather any clues along the way - by reading books for example, just like you did in TW2 when reading books about certain monster type - you won't get the hints about potions. That's the way I see it.
And you will still need to gather herbs, to prepare potions for the first time and to upgrade them further. It just seems it will have more meaning to it apart from just grinding.