Sean mentioned in an interview that they wanted to make sure take off and landing weren't enormous challenges like in some other more hardcore space sims, which I can kinda understand. You do that heaps, but being unable to crash if you're flying recklessly really takes away from the thrill of flying that this game should have, but doesn't.
Even if there was a non-default option to disable that safety barrier, it'd make flying loads more fun to me.
I wonder if it's not simply bad game design decisions, but performance issues related to doing collision detection on the procedurally generated terrain.
Frankly, I think it was shitty, late QA. I don't know if it was Sony or their own in-house QA, but that decision to limit the flying on the planet seems preposterously late in the development. Consider the contextual landing crosshair that is still in the game, even though it's almost
impossible to consistently use with the game as it is. Dumping the planet rotation was a change that confirmed to be last minute and was basically shrugged off with 'well, playtesters got confused'. Honestly, the whole thing seems like they got a bunch of dope heads who don't play games to do their QA and they took their issues way,
way too much to heart. You install the mod that gets rid of the bumper height and it's
so much easier to land and so,
so much easier to enjoy flying around the planet and look at shit.
My opinion on the lack of communication, at this point, is that it sucks. I get that they shot themselves in the foot by being far too open with what turned out to be their general dreams for the game as opposed to actual, hard mechanics. However, at some point you need to say something, anything, to the people who have stuck with your game.
Personally, I ejected it off my hard drive a while ago, I defended them on here a lot but I can't in good conscious do it again. They owe people at least a 'hello, we're alive, we're working on it'. Not even an update, not even a list of things they're working on at that moment, just a 'we hear you, we're working on it'. They've had one embarrassing slip up, dropped some empty statement, and have been otherwise completely silent the whole time. Unacceptable.