I'm definitely one of those players who dropped the game initially because the pathing (and building) felt so unintuitive. It's only on a pure lark that I picked it up again and played the hell out of the game. I'm used to it now (well over hundreds of hours) but even at hour 100 I remember thinking the path system felt extremely clunky. For me, it was a very big hurdle to cross. I had to watch youtube tutorials to understand pathing, and when a game requires youtube tutorials for you to maximize your pleasure from it, that's an issue. I like challenges in games because they're fun to do, not challenges inherently in and of themselves. It's why I'm playing a video game in the first place.
I can imagine lots of other people being frustrated and never returning.
At this point I agree it's probably too late to revamp a good portion of it, but it would be lovely if the devs could give an settings option to "truly freebuild" like the Nexus mod offers. Let us path close to water, let us path into habitats, allow us to terrain over paths etc. (You could put a warning on the freebuild mode that things might get weird if you use this tool).
This is such a stunningly beautiful game, I'm all for any option that gives more freedom for builders to take advantage of that.
I can imagine lots of other people being frustrated and never returning.
At this point I agree it's probably too late to revamp a good portion of it, but it would be lovely if the devs could give an settings option to "truly freebuild" like the Nexus mod offers. Let us path close to water, let us path into habitats, allow us to terrain over paths etc. (You could put a warning on the freebuild mode that things might get weird if you use this tool).
This is such a stunningly beautiful game, I'm all for any option that gives more freedom for builders to take advantage of that.