I feel like people are missing the concept. It's loose articles. Like someone clips out several pages because of a cool invention in popular mechanics. While you don't have the full magazine, if you collect enough scraps, you'd have the full artilce/magazine. It's not COMPLETELY logical, and nothing is in this game. Jars disappear for game balance. NOT for realism. Zombies exist for, well gameplay and not realism.
What if you ONLY had these in loot bags? These are SUPPOSED to feel special to help you move towards your desired build, not replace it. I suppose I might feel strongly because I am playing a system now that uses it and I am having WAY more fun because of it. I'm 1100+ hrs of actual gameplay (majority solo) so this is coming from someone with 40+ hours in every Alpha past 6 till now.
Either way, people have strong feelings on the current system as it can be very random and keep you from getting what you would like. This let's you nudge it in your desired direction. Again, not saying these replace, but supplement
In the end, what is really different other than that you can make any magazine from generic scraps? You now have to find a LOT more scraps to max everything out unless you're also getting magazines. And, if you're also getting magazines, it just seems like overkill, even ignoring the fact that generic scraps aren't going to combine into your choice of magazine. If the scraps were specific to magazines - Scrap of Southern Farming - then I could see it as a possible option. However, if it's generic scraps, it just really doesn't make a lot of sense. There's a line where something that isn't realistic is either acceptable or not. Some things are acceptable for gameplay reasons, while other things are not. A lot of people don't consider missing jars to be acceptable, but they at least aren't too illogical. You can easily imagine that you're just tossing them away whenever you use them. Yes, it's true that a person in such a world wouldn't waste them, and yes, if you tossed them away, most wouldn't break so you should be able to pick them up, but it can still make sense, even if it's kind of dumb. But if you were to actually go out and start grabbing scraps of random magazines all around the world, what is the chance you'll have even the slightest chance of finding enough of any specific magazine to be of any use? Pretty much zero. It's so far beyond logical that it doesn't work, which puts it too far into the unrealistic category to be okay.
If you were to suggest that you could get scraps and then craft them into a random magazine, that might be at least logical and acceptable. It would suggest that you're finding random scraps and once you have X scraps, you've found enough to make a magazine, but that because the scraps are random, you don't choose the magazine and you just get whatever you get. That can make sense. However, it does not really offer any value. You want a way to get the magazines you choose, which this doesn't offer. And this would just require you to use another (limited) inventory space to collect the scraps instead of just getting completed magazines. It could be okay to add, but not really needed, and not what you want.
It's clear that you like it because it makes it faster to get the magazines you want, but that's not enough reason to add something that makes no sense to vanilla. It's fine as a mod, for those who don't care about how illogical it is and just want magazines to be easier to get, but not for vanilla. In the end, what you want is that you can complete your magazines for specific sets more easily, right? What would be wrong with just reducing the number of magazines instead? That is entirely logical and would also make it easier to complete magazine sets. I think you'll have far more support for something like that than crafting magazines out of random scraps.
In the end, I've had very little trouble finding magazines that I want in the game. Many of them have specific types of containers where they are most likely to drop, so if you target those, you can quickly increase the number you have. I often don't even hit mailboxes very much beyond the first few days (2 hour days) because it's just as easy to get what I want while looting POI. I'll grab a mailbox at a POI I'm looting or questing at, but I don't run down the street and hit every mailbox after that first couple of days. I do it initially just to get a faster start. After that, I will hit a Crack-A-Book if I find one, which isn't always the case. And I'll just focus on where I know things are. Forge Ahead has a very high chance of dropping in workstations - workbench, cement mixer, etc. - so I'll keep an eye out for any POI that have any form of construction on them and also check garages that often have workbenches. The two tool magazines and electrical magazines drop often from the box trucks, so I'll stop and loot those anytime I find them. Cooking is simple as it's very easy to get from cabinets, which are in just about any POI. Weapon magazines will drop easily if you put in any points into your weapon. And so on. If you know where magazines are likely to drop and you keep an eye out for them, it really isn't that difficult to find them. And I don't even put points into skills specifically to get an increased drop of magazines, and probably spread my points too far that I get less focused drops, yet I still don't really have a problem. Of course, if you want to max out certain magazines within the first week or two, you're going to have trouble doing so. But if you're willing to let things happen in a more reasonable (longer) pace, it isn't really that bad.
Now, I'm not saying magazines can't use some work. Some do take much longer than others to get as they have far fewer drop locations or are only available in containers that can drop a lot of different magazines, causing them to drop infrequently. Those could either get more drop locations or have their required numbers be reduced. And there are other ways magazines could be improved. I just don't think that random scraps crafted into your choice of magazine is okay. Again, it's fine as a mod, just not for vanilla.
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