If you're trying to craft something complex that requires materials from all over the world, buying materials from far away nodes might be the best option rather than traveling across the map, gathering and potentially lose your stuff if someone raids your caravan.
To buy something you will have to be in the selling node (no global auctioneer). And then you still need a caravan to get to your own node with the bought mats, unless you can buy everything all at once in that node to craft it there. So if you buy or gather mats wouldn't matter much in that scenario.. When you already spend a hour to travel to the node in question, why spend x gold if you get the item for free with another ~10 min effort. The same ~10 min another player of that node would have needed to get to sell you the item.
Yes....except if you can GATHER the resource.... you're unlikely to be needing it for CRAFTING. Catch 22.
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Hopefully one day soon they will fix it so we can change them. Coming soon™.