Bungo we need to talk you really don't seem to get your player base.
You say you removed crafting because you didn't want it taking away from the joy of random rolls but you can't remove what doesn't exist. There is no joy in your random loot just an endless stream of disappointment. We all know going in that there is only a ridiculously low chance of whatever roll we might be chasing dropping and that's when you haven't managed to weight them to never drop at all. The only way to avoid the misery is to expect nothing.
Removing crafting didn't incentivise us to chase random rolls. I am not interested in grinding your overlong boring repetitive recycled activities anymore for loot that doesn't drop (and I have 15,000+ hours or something insane in play time). What you did removing crafting was remove any reason to play at all.
At least with crafting there was a viable loop, suffer to get the red borders, craft, test and level the guns and grind for the materials to enhance them which took quite enough time. Adding in 100s of hours of even more grinding for rolls that may never appear was a step to far.
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I actually have the perfect solution for the crafting/random rolls issue. Each weapon that can be crafted should have a secret extra perk that will only roll on random drops and can’t be added via crafting. That way there is still a reason to have a crafted version (curate the gun as desired + enhanced perks) but also a reason to hunt for a good roll with the hidden perk. Alternatively (or maybe even in tandem) certain perks can only be unlocked for crafting after meeting specific prerequisites - similar to the shaped exotics.