The "negative nancy" answer (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Wednesday, May 18, 2016, 18:57 (2908 days ago) @ Kahzgul

I'm going to come off as a bit overly negative here, but I truly believe what I say. The simple answer to your question, IMO, is that Bungie didn't put much though into it. Like many of the peripheral systems in Destiny, the gunsmith is nothing more than yet another repetitive activity to keep us grinding yet another rep meter in the hopes of yet more RNG-based rewards.

I bet there was a small amount of conversation within Bungie at some point where a couple designers said "we don't want to make the Gunsmith weapons OP, right?" "no, just make them all crappy to be safe". They came up with a handful of test weapons (how many are there? 10? I don't actually know) and designed a small set of corresponding bounties, and threw it in the game. All of it is under-developed, makes very little sense in terms of how it fits into the fiction of the game world, and adds virtually nothing in terms of unique or rewarding gameplay experiences.

All that said, I think there is plenty of potential in there somewhere... the Gunsmith could certainly be worked into the game in interesting ways in the future. For example, what if the prototype weapons functioned like true prototypes: Awesome and creative new features, but they don't always work quite right. A rocket launcher with a DEVASTATING payload, but once in a while a projectile will fail to detonate. A new machine gun that has a super-fast reload, except that it jams every now and then.
How about new weapons that don't fit into the current archetypes? A flamethrower? A laser-gun? Grenade Launcher?

As Blackt1g3r already pointed out, these kinds of additions would require more substantial work from Bungie. It seems to me that Bungie has entered "The fans need content, lets get stuff out the door no matter how underwhelming it is!" mode. Personally, I'd much rather have longer waits between updates and get genuinely substantial stuff added to the game.