I think the point about balance is valuable. In the 1980's the digital transition had just started and mostly contributed to cleaner control of analog processes like computer-controlled tracking shots over models(all the "swooping spaceship shots" were done this way). But most of the things one could do to add visual interest to a shot, regardless of the particular tech, were fundamentally pre-production, not post: Storyboarding, staging, lighting, prop and costume work; well-rehearsed and directed performances. The parts that were meant to be special effects were still often obviously abstract in nature, outside of the biggest productions: e.g. a character walking away from a burning airplane wreck might just be composited on top of a fireball in a very basic way, if the production couldn't afford to destroy an actual airplane. Even just doing any compositing was not an easy task and involved a few specialty roles to create mattes etc. So there were some natural constraints that pushed everything towards building up the parts of the scene that were actually "live-action".
Once CGI rolled in - and really, this was true of all graphics when you look at things like 90's magazines overusing Photoshop filters - we got a taste for adding multiple layers of production on top of everything, which made the final image less "tied together" and more of a chimera.
I do think animation has gotten better overall, even 2D, because animation has always embraced being chimerical and covering that up by finding a consistent approach to the final image. All that's changed is that there's a lower reliance on large numbers of drawings. In the 80's, very few animation productions could really achieve their full vision - with few corrective tools available, you had to have some excellent draftsmanship just to get a product out the door. While there were opportunities to use that to expressive effect, most of TV animation stuck to simple shots and reused as much as they could get away with. This also really pushed the default look of animation towards whatever was easy to draw, which dampened the tone of works trying to feel serious.
Now we have digital puppets that still are fundamentally 2D but allow the animator to spend more time on creating a performance that reuses snippets of pre-drawn material, which is overall a good thing. If they want to push a scene further and add additional camera angles or poses, they have the option to do so and can apply CGI to create the necessary references too - you aren't bottlenecked so much by drawing, but neither are you stuck trying to composite in a CG image, because you can paint over it and get whatever look you want, as long as that look isn't live action.