If I'm remembering correctly, you also couldn't repair items that you couldn't craft. I spent about 1k hours on A16, and I think I found the sniper rifle recipe a grand total of 3 times. So every time I found a sniper, I'd cherish it (and it's parts, since I could combine to repair/upgrade.)Well, I hate to keep living in the past, but since I've already started going down the rabbit hole.... To me this is also a consequence of the removal of item degradation. For those unaware, it used to be that every time you repaired an item, its quality declined. Now there was a time when item quality was a range between 1 and 600 instead of 1 to 6, so you had a lot of room to work with. But the fact that items did not last forever meant that both crafting and looting were valuable. You would craft replacement items, but you could save resources if you lucked out and looted something.... or you could even loot something superior to what you could craft.
For me, this was one of the most disappointing changes they've ever made. It seems small, but item degradation made crafting and looting always vital to the game. Now, once you have a top tier item you never need worry about it again.
I'd be okay with repairs degrading item quality if we had combining and 600 quality levels back. But needing to constantly replace my steel pickaxe would get pretty old for me (I usually have to repair it 3-4 times per mining trip.)