We took each aspect of core Minecraft and aimed to enhance most of them with mods. While some of the core features will be forced upon the player, other features (That may seem a bit out of the scope of normal Minecraft) are optional, and if you feel they take away from your idea of Minecraft, can be avoided all together :)
Starting with, of course, Mining. We wanted to keep this mostly the same as the system already in place works very well. However, we want the player to interact with the world, and we feel strip mining takes away from that. We added a mod that incentivizes the player from strip mining, and encourages them toward caving instead, making them interact with mobs and generated structures. Strip mining is still possible, as we don't want to take away the choice, but the player will now become exhausted from doing so, causing hunger to drain faster, and more. We also added the vanilla ores to the nether, giving the player more reason to spend time in the nether, both upping the risk and reward.
Crafting - This has been kept the same. Ironically, crafting is not actually a big part of Minecraft despite being in the name. However, we acknowledge that some players like to undertake long crafting chains to yield some fruitful rewards (Like a lot of the Tekkit Modpack). So we intend on adding Galacticraft 5 when it releases, as it provides those extended crafting recipes that you may enjoy. It also adds another huge component to the modpack - Exploration.
Talking of Exploration, we want the player to have not only more options to explore, but more reasons to. Regardless of Galacticraft coming in the future, we have many mods that affect structures around the Minecraft world, changing them from what you are used to. This includes but is not limited to: Stronghold, Desert Temples, Dungeons and Ocean Monuments. We also added a deeper level of exploration with 2 mods. These mods also affect another core aspect: Progression. These mods are: The Twilight Forest, a new dimension that offers many places to explore with many new challenges. The other mod is "Deeper and Darker" Which extends the challenge of the Warden further, adding more things to explore and another difficult dimension to conquer.
Progression - We think the progression in Minecraft is a little too quick, a suit of iron armour and the overworld is a breeze. With that, we add an Enhanced AI mod, that changes the behaviour of all vanilla creatures to make them more difficult. When combined with the encouragement of caving from earlier, you may find it's a little more difficult to get upgraded as quickly. However, we also ackowledge there must come a point where the player needs to feel overpowered, so to compensate for the harder difficulty, we have the Apotheosis mod, which completely revamps enchanting, again making it a little more challenging, but adds better enchantments, making it worth the investment. See SHARPNESS IX and KNOCKBACK V as good examples.
Difficulty - Like we said in the progression section, the overworld can become a little easy, so we have added some mods that will increase the difficulty. We kept in mind that the player cannot just die due to RNG as that is extremely annoying. Instead, the player must be given the opportunity to use skills and strategy to survive. The way we have done this is by making night time a much greater threat. With the previously mentioned "Enhanced AI" mod, along with "Mutant Monsters" and "Celestial Events", the night becomes a problem that needs to be addressed. In addition, we have also added the "Better days" mod. This has increased the duration of both Day and Night. This gives the player ample time to prepare for the dangers, while further increasing the time the player is in danger. Finally, we acknowledge that sleeping is able to bypass this. So we added the "Sleep Tight" mod. This rebalances sleeping so that you cannot skip EVERY night, but equally, you can skip some. It also adds some benefits to sleeping in the same place.
Building - Yet another important aspect of Minecraft that is already pretty well done at this point, and there are various mods already mentioned that add more building blocks to the game, so we don't feel the need for abuilding specific mod.
Redstone - Redstone is a fun and challenging part of Minecraft, and we believe it is a little underdeveloped, which makes it challenging. We understand that this challenge can be part of the fun of redstone, we think that it can be frustrating to a lot of players. With that, we have "Project Red". It simplifies the basic forms of Redstone, allowing players to use wires instead, but adds a wide variety of logic gates, for those wanting something more complicated.
Weapons and combat - We added a whole host of weapons to this Modpack as we think that the typical Sword gets a little monotonous, so why not try out a battle-axe? Additionally, we have added the "Better Combat" mod, which changes up animations and fighting mechanics, adding some further variety to the game.
Finally, the NPCs - We have turned villages from a small stop which the player raids once and forgets about it, to a much larger infrastructure within the world. With the addition of "Guard Villagers" and the previously mentioned "Enhanced AI" Night times go from a simple zombie invasion, to a scale model of war. You can interact with the villagers and help them in their fight, or sit by and watch as Endermen sneak past guard Villagers and go straight for the civilians.
There are a few more mods in the pack that serve as surprises, and there are also some Quality of Life mods that help the player along with their journey!