This is one of the main reasons that I ended up quitting The Witcher 3. I could never get used to the play control that felt clumsy and weird to me. It just always felt like a chore to play

You're disqualified from the contest for this statement. Get out. Jokes aside, did you play it with a controller or keyboard & mouse? It's totally a controller game.

I have noticed that for many people a deep story is crucial to them liking a game. For me the story does not have to be the greatest story of all time. It can just be simple and have some humor thrown in every once in a while. That is good enough for me.

This is a great point and one of the reasons I love Super Mario games so much. I love collecting stuff, like you do, and Super Mario has just a simple story with some great humor and it's a full on collectathon.

Have you tried games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Immortals Fenyx Rising? The latter is probably closer to the game you want to create. It has a lot of platforming elements with a vast open world to collect stuff from.