I did not read the other pages, but I'd like to explain my views. This is not the divine word of god. So please take a moment and understand that I'm not saying I'm correct. This is my view. You have yours. I respect your opinion. No need to white-knight. Love you~
I care about how expensive things are. When I see a cool new mod (like MFR and TiCO, even though those two are the complete opposite of what I'm talking about), I really want to try out all the new features. I want to play with those mods in my game. I want to see how they can help me design a cool contraption I could otherwise not make. I want to have fun. Now, if the mod author decides, "Well this should be expensive because it's so cool and people want to use it. This should be expensive because it's powerful. This item should require mob drops because well, mob drops. And everyone surely plays on easy or higher, and mob AI doesn't suck in this game" I find myself enjoying it less.
Let's say the author thinks that an item is very powerful and does something great, like making a tree farm. And because it's powerful, they need to nerf it. To me, this is okay. I'd do this if I were an author. It makes sense. You have to implement some sort of value in your mod. But where this starts going wrong, in my opinion, is how they nerf it. And they almost always choose to make it harder to obtain, by say, making it require 47 diamonds around a gold block. Immediately, I don't want to use whatever item it is. It's just not worth it to me. What they should (opinion) have instead done, is nerf the item. They should have lowered the efficiency. Or the speed. Or raised the cost to operating the item. These are all great options, because I can still use the feature. Even better? They could have made varying levels of the item that are progressively better and better, with the same core functionality. I know I complain about Sengir a lot, but he did a GREAT job when he implemented bee houses. Now I can breed bees at the start of the game, without jumping through all these hoops. Yeah, the bee house is not as good as the other 2 beekeeping methods, but I can still play with the core feature. And I can decide to upgrade the item, depending on whether or not I need a certain function. This is a great way of nerfing things or adding value. It lets people use the feature, and the original item still has a point. But a lot of modders simply don't do this. They choose to make the item harder to obtain, while keeping the same functionality.
Greg is exempt from this. My only problem is that Gregtech is hardmode by default in the Ultimate Pack (which Lambert2191 has pointed out, why add a recipe-changing mod to a pack designed to showcase all the mods?). His mod is supposed to make everything difficult. This is for servers. It has its uses and it has a clear, solid purpose. But when some modders pull a Microsoft and force a new, bad feature with an iron fist, it's just stupid. They say, "Oh, solar was OP so now you're never going to use them again. Make them less OP? NAH, you're just not gonna get to make them in the first place. Those cool treefarms that people liked using? Yeah, you're gonna need this really expensive item in order to do any of that. Make the farms less efficient? No, that would require a bit more work. You liked my old farms? I'm taking those out, gotta use my super cool new ones that have a non-rectangular setup and are really just too much work. Don't like it? Well you're gonna have to".
A lot of people seem to get some sort of smug satisfaction when they oh-so-brilliantly say, "Well you should shut up and stop being a brat, the modders aren't making their mod for you". Yeah, we get it. You're not a genius. We've heard it. Author's not making the mod for me or anyone else? They're just making it for themselves and releasing it? That's alright. But people are going to dislike it. People aren't going to want it in a modpack. The simple fact is that most people are going to use the mod that they like. SteveCarts2's new galga-albania-doria-kaborian drill requiring your first born child as a sacrifice to make? Yeah, people don't like that. Sengir's farms? They're cool and all. I like the idea. But we're going to use other options. We've seen it time and time again. Advanced Solars? Why use those when we can power our system for cheaper and do something creative with TE. Stevecarts? We have MFR. Wouldn't it just be great if modders stopped doing this when people like a certain feature? What if Stevecarts was just less efficient? What if macerators were just not as good and could still be made with flint? I think we all could learn something from Sengir and PC and a couple other modders. The best way to make everyone happy is letting them use an awesome feature without stressing about the cost. Think it's too good? You don't have to nerf it into oblivion.
And yeah, I get that Sengir and ASP and Greg are not waiting on my every whim trying to appease me. No, you're not a genius for telling me that. Though if you'd like to revert to that state and try to get me to realize something obvious, go right ahead.
TL;DR: we dun liek it wen we cant use our faverit stuff anymoe.