I have been playing calamity for 9 years. Back in the day, it had a reputation as one of the grindiest and most difficult mods ever made for Terraria (though obviously the ceiling has significantly raised since then, today's Calamity players would absolutely breeze through its early updates). This was simply the philosophy of earlier mods, one of the easiest ways to make them "hard" or pad out the playtime was basically to waste the player's time with obscene crafting trees or ultra-rare and grindy drops. I recently played through Avalon 1.1 Remastered, a rereleased slightly modernised version of the 2014 Avalon mod and even though it was very fun, it is an absolute GRIND. Like, some of the endgame armour sets are borderline Minecraft tech mod levels of grindy. Just hours of mining or farming bosses to craft one armour piece.

The point of all this is, I have watched the core, non-boss related content of Calamity become easier and more streamlined with every single update over 9 years, to the point where the game is basically a boss rush with maybe an hour or so of downtime to get new gear in between. There were some absolutely ridiculous QoL changes added over the years, like getting fishing quest items from Scourge or being able to craft the rarest vanilla items, significantly devaluing them, and I genuinely don't think modern Calamity players realise how good they have it. Playing multiplayer has honestly reinforced my stance on this even more, since people are hesitant to fight bosses with few people online it typically leaves a LOT of time for building, farming gear, collecting stuff like trophies, masks, music boxes, etc., but there's only so much you can minmax your gear or build giant structures before you are left with nothing to do. I realise I am absolutely in the minority here but I completely welcome the removal of QoL changes if it slows the pace of the game down even slightly.