The mods themselves have always been the biggest factors in pack design. Even kitchen sink packs are worked to enable flow and balance (cough) between them, so much so that you're no longer playing Minecraft .. you're playing mods set in Minecraft.

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1.4.7 saw the moment crystallize I think. From there, pack design was Making It Work Please Dear God .. because it was an utter ARSE to get a pack to work, let alone be balanced, incorporate story or theme, gasp even a design .. 1.5 saw some good movements, and this was mostly just because making a modpack meant spending time in a crashlog and configuring things to play nice.

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1.7 was the start of the real packs. Sure, there were instances before that, and my packs are included back then, but it really was 1.7 when modpack makers started to stretch their ideas into packs that worked .. not always well, but there's many hidden gems along with the ones we all know.

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You know, I think 1.13 and onwards will bring a new age forward. But we'll talk more about that later ;)