>>25075883I think it's the fact that people see Essentials as "easier" so it attracts people who don't want to put in as much effort. Good things can potentially come from it, like Sage, but the people that regularly use it aren't going to bring those things.
It's kind of like how there are more shitty Gen 3 hacks than Gen 1 or 2 hacks (unless you look wayyyy back to early 2000s hacks that have all but disappeared from the Internet), not that Gen 3 is worse or anything, and we have a good share of good Gen 3 hacks, but people who don't really want to try see "oh, Gen 3 is easier to use!" and flock there while Gen 1 and 2 have less of that (again, not that you can't find it if you look).
Essentials is like that but much more extreme because of the way it gets actively advertised as "hey, we're super easy to use!"
It also doesn't help that Reborn ended up getting popular and forming a community of tumblrites who started making their own hacks in the vein of it. The seriousedgy[/spoiler:lit] and progressive
tumblrtone of Reborn is somehow considered a gold standard among a large chunk of Essentials users. At least Insurgence is trying to tone down the edge and listen to feedback even if I don't care for it. 