Least you're not chucking stacks of gold and diamond away.
TC3 research was never that bad. It required a lot of weird things, but frankly that was cool and added a nice mechanic to it. Of course, one could argue that any even semi-competent modpack has plenty of ways to get, as you claim, "stacks of gold and diamonds", but let's not even start on that.
I don't mind realism. But real research doesn't run on magical, nonexistent points, and more importantly, randomly fail miserably without cause. And while I can see obvious impossible researches for miles away, don't attempt to claim someone can realistically see the 1-point research fails on 5-rune pages (which happens way, WAY to often).
I actually think TC should scrap research entirely for TC5 - it wouldn't actually need that many tweaks, as it's
decently balanced as is sans research - because IMO you won't ever find a research system that most people like, or at least that's how it appears at this rate. We've clearly proven that mass items (TC2) and puzzles (TC4) are disliked by many potential fans of the mod (hell, if the research wasn't so painful I'd have half my stuff be TC4), which brings us to TC3.....er, the issue most people had, including myself, was that research was painful to do after about 2 worlds. Still an issue, and I don't see that changing no matter what Azanor does.