It would help if you had new material to contribute rather than a rehash of the existing conversation.
Inasmuch as I can parse it, I agree with your opinion of cross-mod balance. Its a mod pack maintainer issue, for the most part. Big Field Mods like Rp2 and Gregtech do need to maintain a "balance" of their content with external mods, and that's what I'm referring to. Greg definitely wants a measured progression, and many mods circumvent it. He responds by needing them via reflection, oredict and recipe hacks. Greg is definitely concerned with this, and to a lesser extern Eloraam's actions suggested she was as well. So they made it their problem.
And it's a hard thing to do, so let's applaud them for trying. Personally, I found Gregtech novel but repetitive and the mod suffers from feature bloat and a raft of discarded content. I like the principle, and it's probably the only reason (besides compatibility) to keep IC2 around. But... I think Mekanism is emerging as a successor to IC2. If IC2 is pure maintenance, that's fine. But other industrial-themed mods are emerging that have more features, better cross-mod balance, better cross-mod support, and that are not run by a dev who puts on affectations of megalomania.
As for the idea that the modern Minecraft scene somehow discourages creativity? We've seen this feeble rant before, and it doesn't hold water. You sound like someone who is so focused on what he lost that that you're unable to see what you have. My recent let's plays bind together almost a dozen modern mods into a novel system, and my build is one of nearly two dozen I considered. If you find all your builds coming out the same, you either need to think harder about novel builds, or you need to diversify the mods you play with.
If you actually have anything new to add, please do. The conversation would be interesting to continue in a fair, courteous way. So far, I think all that's said is all that needs to be said.
