I agree it is immersive, but I have to admit it does lose some of its value the more you go there.
Mostly because it takes a lot of time and work to get down there and once you're there, now you have to spend much more time than before to extract the ore. This in my opinion negates the feeling of reward for reaching it and with itself brings more threats in the form of respawns.
So, while I agree with you that it is really cool and much more realistic, I do think that it's something that we need. It elongates the feeling of grinding.
The areas themselves are supercool though, props on the makers of those.