One of the results of it is that crafting becomes quite unnecessary. I havent used crafting in all my playthroughs so far, except some occasional and rare use, just to see how something works, what combines with what. (Ive been trying to see how intuitive it is without reading all those recipes. And its not. but - my bad.)
Im figuring, if the amounts of loot such as potions, weapons, armors and magic items are lowered, crafting would become much more valuable skill to have.
In my opinion, the Crafting skill would have been a more valuable skill if a large chunk of it hadn't been split off and combined with the Repair skill (now called Blacksmithing), all to make Repair more attractive. It probably would have been better if they had just folded the Repair skill in with Crafting instead, as Crafting wasn't particularly strong to start out with.
This was discussed over yonder:
Concerns about crafting. 
