MassFX is incredibly practical, I've been using those scripts as well: http://loran-cg.blogspot.ca/2011/10/kaboom-massfx.html http://loran-cg.blogspot.ca/2011/10/krumbler.html Takes a bit of tweaking but the results are pretty cool.
If you are talking about the old Havok Reactor physics engine then I would agree. If you're talking about MassFX that replaced reactor in 3dsmax 2012 then I think you haven't evaluated it fairly. MassFX is vastly superior to Reactor, it solves in the viewport rather than externally and then piped back into max, like…