With a very limited perk pool and little reason to run the longest dungeon in the game, Tempest replicas would be a great goal to work towards while simultaneously making crafting useful again. They gave a reason to log on and grind for a great but limited reward. It would have taken thousands of desecrated flesh and resil craft mods to roll the perk you’re going for for just a single piece.
With a very limited perk pool and suboptimal attributes (focus+int??, dex+str??), most people would only want 1 or 2 pieces at most. In its current state, if you want to land ie a specific piece, it would take around 700 rolls. For ie pants, this is 2 MILLION GOLD worth of mats, assuming you get the desecrated flesh for free. With this gear being untradeable, this means that all your other rolls simply get salvaged. This is why the price of desecrated flesh has gone down to nothing, just like spectral dust and sticky vines. The untradeable factor is extremely significant, it makes it so replicas simply aren’t worth the price to craft.