Can you still craft or you just collect all the shit?
To me, crafting is not a good game concept. It's just a roundabout and time-consuming way of making things that are actually useful through the gathering of useless materials. I'd rather have that system as streamlined as possible to concentrate all attention on exploration, awareness and combat. If anything, the way The Culling does things seems to validate my view. Crafting is extremely simple, but you still need to put yourself at risk and explore to get better equipment.
In a Dark Souls-esque arena survival game, I guess you would have chests protected by monsters and traps and that would be the only method to get better equipment, plus drops.