Useful and rewarding can unfortunately be ticked off in this case, especially considering that the new introductory quest hands you a linear fusion rifle that can be crafted into an absolute god roll. Fun and well designed though? Oh no.

Welp, other than the slight advantage the advanced perk gives over the normal perk, crafting weapons don't seem as useful or rewarding for the time invested. I craft 'em just because it's there and something to do. Before I was even able to craft the Forensic Mightmare I received two or three with the roll I wanted to craft. So yeah, the enhanced perk is a plus over the normal drop in that sense, but I can't craft multiple perks. Every dropped gun has two selectable perks for the first two perks. Sure, you could jump through all the hoops, craft a gun, decide you want to change the perk, get materials, reshape it to a different perk, and do that over and over each time you want to change perks. Or, you could jump through the hoops, craft a gun, level it up, reshape the perks, craft another gun, level it up, reshape it to have different perks, etc. just to have multiple options. With 6 perks in each slot and 4 slots you'd have to craft 6⁴ guns and store 6⁴ guns. So, either you're crafting multiple/storing multiple guns or each time you put the work into reshaping the gun you essentially wipe out your progress. Ranking up vendors gives way better guns than anything you can craft. You can get a gun with two options for the first two slots and up two three for the other two. That's one gun, one vault space, that can be set up 36 different ways. Much better in my opinion than the advantage you get from one static roll with the enhanced version of the perk.

That’s because you should treat crafting as a safety net if you can’t get the roll you wanted from grinding. Just look at the raid weapons. Took me over 2,250 spoils to get the adept Vision I wanted, when with the new system I could have spent 100 over 5 weeks and gotten a perfectly crafted one by the end of it. Bungie’s major issue is not giving more fallback mechanics for deepsight drops. Just look at this season, where the Ketchcrash guarantee was bugged and they decided (for some reason) to remove the weekly focus only to add it back in Week 7. Levelling weapons could also do with a bit more balancing.

I guess It's just sad to me to think what it coulda been if designed by/for players. Vault space saver Customization Reflection of time spend crafting