Simply put, I don't like the direction I see the mod heading in, the old tech tree progressed in a natural manner, you start off taking five iron ingots and a furnace, you make an iron furnace, you use the furnace to cook some rubber and the metals you'll need for the next tier, get your generator, extractor, and macerator going, etc. Now you have to waste time and resources hammering ingots into plates just to make a simple iron furnace, the most basic "machine" in the entire mod, something you'll need to craft before you can even get the machine you'll need to be able to get those plates without throwing away resources on hammers. What's the difference between this and the extractor and macerator, you may ask? Simple, with those machines you never felt like you were throwing away resources before you got them, they simply increased the output you'd get from them, you could easily go out and find enough iron, tin, copper, and rubber to get you through the entire tech tree without feeling forced to use the macerator and extractor on them.
With the tedium added to the mod in the new version the rewards simply aren't worth the hassle anymore, Machinemuse does armour better than IC2, it's better looking, I can use any power source I want, and I can configure it based on what I plan on doing. T-Con does tools and ore processing better, it may not be the most efficient ore processing available, but it's the most fun to me, so no more reason to bother with the macerator or power tools, just throw some moss on my pick and I'm good to go. What's left after that? The macerator is the only machine that really has any use outside of crafting other machines, power tools, and armour, there's industrial diamonds, sure, but why bother making those? A few jungle saplings, a lumber axe, and a minium stone I've got all the iron, gold, and diamonds I'll ever need. There are the crops, but they need to be updated badly, add some mod support, Natura, Witchery, BoP, etc.
The solution? I'd say two options, an IC2 Classic branch that makes minimum changes, none of this hammering plate nonsense, keep the old power system, etc. that focuses on simply updating IC2 to remain compatible and IC2 Experimental, alternate option, make the changes configurable, give the devil his due at least Greg generally has enough courtesy to do that much, make it so players can disable and enable whatever changes they want.