I think for the advanced enhanced input its “advanced” your over looking. Currently the only way to add input outside of xinput devices or support controller types is via third party plugins that do NOT use enhanced input and use legacy because it allows device -id’s to be tied to the input controller and key event bindings. Something that EIS doesn’t currently support. Even the legacy way of handling is tedious requiring you to know the device you need to support in advance. (think racing wheels, 3rd party controllers, bluetooth devices, more than 4 controllers) and don’t even get me started on the difficulty getting steam input and unreal PIE/testing to play nice in its current state.
paper2d and paperzd doing “pretty much everything unity can do” is a bit of a stretch. I’ve just finished the 2D skeletal tools plugin to fill “1” gap in the 2D toolbox of UE5. Its currently built on the new skeletal editor because unreal doesn’t have a 2D bone system understanding and also without heavy modification couldn’t treat sprites as meshes to weight to those bones… So I created tooling that did just that. There are indeed many more areas that could use improvement here. They covered this topic quite extensively in the Myth buster series on Day 2 of Unreal Fest 2024 livestream.
I love unreal engine. But I will provide constructive feedback and personally contribute by creating new tools and adding PRs to source to make the thing I love better. Downplaying something in defense of something you care about is a double edge sword. While I’m not validating all of the things mentioned… I definitely do not want to downplay actual issues so they will continue to get the attention they deserve to become an actual 1st class high quality feature and not something stuck in beta/experimental for over 4 years.