So incredibly wrong I am just confused.
EE2 was not laggy, was not ugly, and was not particularly buggy. It was well implemented and well executed. Those are technical terms.
In comparison with what? Remember that a lot of these mods predate the Big Bukkit crisis. Remember back when mods didn't automatically register and interact cleanly on a fresh install? Remember when "modpack" was like 3 mods and Buildcraft didn't have an API? If EE2 was your only mod it was hardly "imbalanced."
EE2's return on investment was superior to every other mod at the time. But that's sort of outside its original design parameters. Design for mixed-mod worlds is incredibly hard.
It was not creative mode with a thin mask anymore than late game DW20 with gravity suits is creative mode with a thin mask. I have a system that has essentially infinite buildcraft energy for modest investment, and I can hover as well as creative mode and fly substantially faster. I can warp through walls, teleport, change the weather and the time, completely negate all damage and status effects, place torches at range. I can literally let the wither beat on me for 60 seconds then blindly spam the left click with a tier-2 IC2 weapon and win. I can mine as fast as I can quantum dash by hand, and even faster with a mining laser. That's when I'm not running my hybrid TE/TC/IC2/BC/RP2 ore processing system which has a 200% yield on quarry input and 220% yield from my arcane bore. And I run multiples at the same time. In other dimensions so as to keep our landscape pristine.
I'm pretty sure my current character is the equal of any EE2 build at this point, and I'm not even done getting all the things I want. I'm not even done upgrading my armor at this point.
Ladies and gentlemen: Creative Mode!
And yet I still find challenges in my game world. They're different than the challenges we had starting out; but there is still work to be done. I still find myself gated on resources (again, different in character from early game). And all of it with the exception of ONE item (my portal gun, which I actually had the materials to craft but there is a bug that makes them uncraftable right now) has been entirely "legitimate."
Well besides the fact it's no longer updated? The original reason was the destruction catalyst could not really play nicewith anti-grief mods.
Fine, technically it was well implemented. As mods go in terms of design and balance it was poorly planned and thought out. A couple of diamonds into the mod and you now have a renewable and exponential source for materials. It was imbalanced with itself simply because you could infinitely expand the energy collectors. It took my server a matter of days to be running around with gem armor and all the 'expensive' things that existed in that mod. It was not balanced nor thought out.
This is about EE2, not Direwolf20, I wholeheartedly think that gravisuits are OP and need to be banned (and vajra's for that matter).
IC2, buildcraft, (etcetc) allow you to do interesting things but it doesn't allow you to effectively generate any material in the game cheaply from thin air nor does it allow you to clear entire areas (looking at you matter hammer) in a matter of seconds.
The ore processing system you are talking about is necessary because the mods' items require THAT much ore. It is part of the process that makes the mod interesting, gives it steps for you to either automate or babysit. Each one of these processes require investment and continued monitoring. EE2 was, aside from the initial startup cost, free.
You could argue that solar panels and other set ups combined with matter fab effectively do the same thing except for when you bring in gregtech which nerfs these recipes to make it much more difficult to obtain that set up and makes it so it can't feed into itself (uranium cannot be made from UU matter).
There will always be challenges, that you put yourself to. Minecraft is a self-starter game, a sand box. However what is the point of having any mechanics or mods if you can circumvent them with one mod? Why play in survival at all when you can just play in creative mode?
From what I've seen of EE3 the mod developer is trying to implement the system that would be a slightly 'deeper' version of ee2, but in the end will still result in the same thing.
