3 hours ago, RipClaw said:The rewards are in no way linked to your crafting skills. The game does not know what you can craft and in what quality.
I also don't see how they could balance that. After all, you can be unlucky or lucky with the magazines, so your progress can vary a lot. There is no "The player is level X and therefore has the following crafting skills". The developers can at most balance it based on assumptions and statistics but that's it. It won't work for every player, every playthrough, and every playstyle.
Sure they are not linked and progression is random. So a game designer would simple assume an average progression from time of play or level/gamestage and gives rewards accordingly. If you are lucky with magazines you would craft your guns and the rewards would be meh. If you are unlucky with magazines the rewards would save you from being underpowered.
As Papa said they could also just check the magazine level but I would not like rewards be linked with magazine levels.
Imagine you have really bad luck and just don't find any magazines for your main gun (and the gun also doesn't drop in loot). Also imagine for simplicity sakes the trader just gives you a gun one quality level above the gun you can craft.
So instead of being a safety net the trader would now give you a gun nearly as bad as the one you have and you would still be outgunned by the zombies. On the other hand if you are lucky with finding magazines and already have an OP gun the trader would give you an even better gun. The trader would not be a corrective.