I would say that this forge isn’t near-perfect (4 aoe, 6 dura + random boon) but it sells. So there is a market, it’s just a bit niche 
But I agree it’s still pretty much end-game only, I think it’d be interesting if lesser materials had their efficiency even higher than 200, if PBC 1 was viable with iron tools for example I think it’d be a good thing.
I think my journey with forging is pretty typical from other things I’ve read:
It was the last thing I tried in the game, I didn’t even build a centerforge until I had all the other machines with 10 advanced coils (back when coils were pretty expensive). At first I just messed around to get the feel, mostly just adding damage and durability to my tools.
When the bomb mining nerfs came, I figured I needed to get better at forging so i could make AoE hammers. I found Merlin’s tutorials and was able to consistently forge “good enough” tools to do what I wanted to do. I regularly forged my own tools, weapons, and grapples.
Then the changes to the forge hit, and I lost all my confidence that I knew what I was doing. Things didn’t change that much, but I wasn’t getting the boons to quite the same level, plus now, they were riddled with quirks which ranged from mostly ignorable to making he tool actively feel bad. At the same time, I started to get more actively involved in other aspects of the game. I found my self dreading forging, even though I was still getting generally good results out of it.
When the Boundless Trade Network was created, I finally felt like I could wrap my mind around the economy enough to run a shop. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me and forging, as I was finally bringing in enough coin to buy forged tools and weapons rather then forging them myself.
Since then I have done some forging on the test server, with pretty good success, and have been considering forging again, but I’m not sure if it is worth the trouble for me personally.
I’m not sure what I’d like to see changed about forging, but I do like that it isn’t like other crafting. I don’t think a simple put x in get y out as I have seen suggested elsewhere is a positive direction for forging. I also think that the rng is important: the idea that unexpected things happen when forging that you have to adapt to is really good imo. I think maybe if the forging ingredients were cheaper, so forging wouldn’t feel like as much of an investment, or maybe expanding the deck again to give players more options when it comes to adapting to bad rng would be good. The fact that the current best answer to poor rng is deconstruct and start from scratch does not seem like a great place for forging to be sitting.
There are a few issues with the forge:
Boons that don’t work aren’t excluded (fist aoe, spanner aoe)
The seeming huge amounts of rng
I think one thing though is that we kind of spoiled ourselves. Most people didn’t start by just throwing some things in the forge and coming out with a better, more efficient item. We usually go mining, or save money to buy a forged hammer from someone who has some forging experience. There is no ability to play around with the forge.
I think if there was a “test forge” that could be extremely useful for people learning the forge and trying different methods. Maybe forging needs it’s own tree. Once you forge X amount of times, you get one free boon reroll or something.
I think what could help is making lower end stuff like iron have an extremely high efficiency even with no coils, and then making “half boon” compounds that are cheap to produce so you can actually make low tier tools that are viable and not just a waste. That would allow people to learn and explore some basics of forging without losing too much.
I think the high end stuff should remain difficult because it is high end. It takes skill. (I know rng is there, but the forge does take a certain amount of intuition and proper planning too that really helps mitigate the rng. Sometimes, by an extreme amount).
I suppose the following reflects well parts of the “centraforge experience” for me. Normally I have a bit of bad luck and do about 5-10 deconstructs per set of hammers (2-3, at most at the same time), but today it seems to be particularly against me…
Maybe they could add a counter of how many times a tool has been deconstructed, because I’ve deconstructed the same 3 hammers just over 30 times now! 
In the space of about 30 minutes, so I’ve spent about a minute on each forge attempt.
My issue with this isn’t just my luck though, I can accept I’m not getting the result I want quickly. It’s that now, I’m thinking “ugh, I’m going to have to go look for bitter beans if I want to forge again tomorrow”. 
I’m really curious what setup people have and what they’re aiming for.
