TL:DR Centraforge RNG encourages variety
I think the RNG part of the centraforge would be more acceptable if some boons were balanced. For instance on slingbows: weakeness, slow, and bleeding are next to worthless. I tested a lvl 4 weakness debuff and it lowered a cuttletrunk’s damage from 1400 to 1200. Ditto for reel speed on grapples. It just does not appear to work the way it is supposed to. A lot of items have extremely low base critical chance and critical damage, and so that makes either boon worthless on its own.
In my view, the RNG aspect works well with the variety of useful boons, and when there are few bad boons. I put a golden fist in the forge and can get damage, range, durability, speed, critical chance/power, glow, autoharvest - any of them are useful. The RNG does not really hurt here, it just means I’m not sure what I will get, but I will have a better fist than I started with. However, in the above cases for the slingbow, grapple, and crit, having useless boons makes the RNG a pain, and it could be seen as off-putting to new or infrequent players. Suppose you put a lot of materials/effort into something that sounds good like the damage over time of bleed, only to be disappointed when actually trying it out.
IMO how it should be is this - lower players can forge their gear to make it better, maybe not exactly what they want, but better. Higher players can afford to buy the stuff which is extremely rare and has a precise mix of boons (and possibly quirks).
You spot a super powerful enemy which is almost sure to kill you easily if you approach. From 50 meters out, you whip out your trusty slowing and weakening sniper and debuff the enemy to give the fight a chance, then rush in full guns blazing. Or, you are in a big battle with tons of enemies. You’re a support character and use a debuffing shotgun (or a debuff bomb) to help your team.