I disagree, sugarcane was not the obvious choice, Ex Nihilo is in the pack and so anyone who has used that mod before in the new Yogscast modpack or in Agrarian Skies or wherever else would have assumed that sugarcane would have been easy to get and would have grabbed the food option since you were given a limited amount of food. It is only until later are you able to realize that a lot of Ex Nihilo is disabled. BUT I can understand limiting getting sugarcane later by forcing the player to use Kawaii seeds or automating dirt to smash compressed dirt, I am just saying that sugarcane is in no way the obvious choice.
I don't agree that food was limited early in the pack, or ever, food has never been a problem. For quest rewards you have to look at two things. Is this something that i can use to make other stuff or consumable, and Are the mats for this worth more than the other thing? The sugar cane gives me the ability to make stuff whereas the food I didn't need yet.
I do agree there are a lot of quest rewards in this pack where you are expected to choose between two things that aren't balanced, like the choice between magnesium ingots and titanium ingots, or when the choice was 4 speed upgrades versus one steel casing (the one requiring some lucky drops the other days of grinding). Then the useless end of chain rewards that give start of mod rewards like the brass, or that soul bag at the end of steve's carts, trading an enhanced galgadorian block for (in my case) a run of the mill zombie soul (it didn't even have full HP) I can get that on my own at this point in about 5 minutes start to finish. I'm currently staring down a quest in Industrial revolotion where i craft 4 steel casings and get either a block of ender io dark steel or mekanism steel. The steel casing doesn't even require steel to make, and i already have a ton of steel from melting down chain drops.
The grind never stops in this pack, the only automation we're allowed on resource gathering is buggy, the grindy recipes rarely have late game alternates, and Karma is deliberately tempting us with mods and devices that are extremely difficult to get for their limited utility, just because of a dislike of the mod? Why even include the mod if you don't like it? I don't feel like Botania is a mod that has to be there, if it is op, and not techy enough for the pack, why is it in the pack? Ender IO only seems to be in the pack to generate AE2 silicon, none of the late game recipes require anything else from it, and once i get to Ender IO i completely abandon the buildcraft pipes (except stripes) which Karma so desperately wants to force us to use. I feel like Ender IO could be completely removed if the silicon could come from mechanism and nobody would even miss it.
Spawning is broken somewhere, I can run around all night in the dark and come across only a handful of mobs, or suddenly run into a dozen creepers all at once. The y=200+ spawner worked for about two minutes and since then I've gone whole nights without a single spawn in it. I haven't moved to 1.2.5 to see the squid mating orgy, or the stacked mobs, but I've never had an animal spawn.
You know so like it's changing it up a bit and it does make you have to progress through certain mods. someone else's post on the last few pages got the gears a turning lol. I'm still trying to automate with what I have as I go and I'm not going hardcore toward quest progression so still on first two chapters.