I've been wanting this since month one. Real shame the potential is huge. Hell... add a SMG class... dual weilding of certain pistol weapons etc. How about a few more elemental classes... add some more mele-based weaponry (like the upcoming sword that fills a heavy spot).
Low impact ARs are SMGs.
There's more to the game than PVP.
I believe people are misunderstanding what these weapons are. They are white tier, nothing fancy.
1) Those perks are still bad. Most of the new perks are bad. Bungie should be looking to games like Diablo 3 for interesting perks. Let me spawn an overshield on successive headshots, or have a chance to convert red bar enemies to fight for me, and so on and so forth.
2) The perks on those weapons are still bad. Which is the core of my problem. Destiny has hampered a lot of the perks (wtf, an 80% reduction in speed reload speed?) and added a bunch of new boring ones. Guns are fundamentally less exciting than they were six months ago. Again, look at things like House of Wolves, where you can get guns with elements that contradict the enemies they fight,
and the guns have narrower use case scenarios than average guns you can buy in the store. Like, you might get a void scout rifle that has does damage to shanks... but shanks have arc shields, so it makes no sense. Perks like "25% bonus damage melee after a kill" aren't really useful for a shotgun, where most of the time, you're going to kill an enemy quicker just by shooting it to death. A shoot-punch combo in the crucible will kill anyone--that bonus punch damage ain't helping anyone.
Destiny's raid tier guns used to be: primaries get elements, all guns have outstanding stats, all guns have some special perk that makes them interesting, and a bonus perk against the raid they're from.
Crota comes along and we get less interesting stats and less interesting perks (eg, mark a guy, which lasts for all of a second or two, and has no tactical benefit). They were nice against Hive, however, and had use outside the raid.
Then along comes House of Wolves, and we get guns with bad perks, perks that don't synergize, and more importantly, the second tier perk is
always specific to Fallen, often just one kind of Fallen, meaning that those guns are almost never useful. My arc shotgun, a Found Verdict, will wreck the floor with a Fallen Captain, where the shotgun designed
to kill Fallen Captains will do worse, because it's a flame shotgun--and captains have arc shields. They actually resist my damage, and the chance to suppress their abilities never seems to trigger.
That's why no one plays House of Wolves. Not only is it not particularly fun due to repetitive maps (why didn't Bungie just use crucible maps for horde mode? Lots more variety and fun there), but because none of the loot is actually worth getting.
1. Gunsmith bounty weapons are not supposed to be amazing. They're simple bounties which casual players can knock out for a weekly Legendary weapon delivery. The double kill with a sniper one? Kill Dreg's on Patrol if you can't do it on PvP. Unless specified, bounties don't have to be done I crucible.
2. 4 round mag on a sniper isn't bad. With Field Scout gone, 6 round snipers will all but disappear.
3. If by last round of perks you mean House of Wolves, that expansion introduced perks like Hidden Hand, Battlerunner, Army of One, Full Auto for Scout Rifles, Smallbore for LitC builds...not just Icarus.
4. What's the bug? I did all six subclass quests.
1) I can do them. The perks are just awful. Bounties are not the problem. The guns not being fun to use is. I love the way they look and sound, but a sniper that spends more time without ammo than with because it can only carry 19 rounds, and a perk that almost never triggers? Lame. Again, this isn't just about those guns--this is about things like an exotic shotgun having a signature perk that's "get ammo back for rapid headshots."
A shotgun.
2) Yes. They will all but disappear. And that sucks. Because six rounds is better than 4, unless you've got an efrideet's spear with a combination of speed reload (oh wait, that got nerfed by 80%) and final round. A gun like that will only be useful in normal crucible these days. They're leaving good guns and perks behind, nerfing perks, generally making weapons less enjoyable across the board.
3. Yes, most of the House of Wolves perks suck. I used Icarus as an example.
4. You were supposed to get an emblem, which you will not get if you complete the quests, and Bungie is not offering a way to get them back. I'm not sure if this is true for everyone, but it is something they mentioned.