I was a Production Artist and Art Director in games for almost 30 years, now I teach game art and animation. I remember the beginnings of SC: an artist on one of my teams spent $100 on a spaceship for a game that hadn't shipped yet, and I thought he was crazy. A couple days ago I bought the Constellation Andromeda kit. I don't want to comment on bugs, as given the label of Alpha, I expect them, and I expect the team knows about pretty much all of them: most appear to be physics bugs and latency issues in any case, and I know folks are busily working on everything surrounding physics simulation and network performance. I want to give my impressions of the UI/UX, as I've found that awesome games can flop solely because of bad UI/UX, and inattention to the new player experience and the general desire for streamlined interactions. The first thing is the character movement. Walking speed is silly: it feels like moving through waist-deep molasses. There is no way anyone could want to spend any significant time walking at that speed. The run speed is acceptable (just), but I would up them both. I'd making walking about 2/3 to 3/4 the current run speed, and running probably 2x what it is now. The awful experience of the walk speed is compounded by the functionality of the run toggle: as it is, I want to run 100% of the time (for my sanity) but momentary stops have me going back to walking. So I'm constantly hitting the toggle, and having to train myself to hit the keys in the right order, as hitting the toggle before I start moving has no effect. Given latency issues, this makes simple things like getting on an elevator or a transit train annoying, as the doors can easily close before I get inside unless I time this double keypress action quickly. I have seen nothing in the UI that would let me improve this situation (If there exists a way to do so, please feel free to correct me; however, I would remind folks that this is a new player first impression, and new players are usually not super-invested in digging through options if the game is not immediately fun. They will bounce.) The next thing is interaction mode. It's pretty cumbersome, and makes rote interactions much slower than they should be. Almost every interaction I've had so far is two clicks when one would do. And it's inconsistent: sometimes I can hit F and the thing will happen, sometimes it won't. The system is designed for manipulating multiple choice interfaces, but if there's only one choice most of the time, you've made most interactions worse than they should be. I'd like to hit F and have the thing happen, not have to aim a mouse cursor. And with multiple choices, I'd prefer a crosshair in the center of my screen that controls what I interact with: hold F, look at the thing, and it activates on keyup. Perhaps the cursor UI could be an alternate for computer interfaces where it would be appropriate, but so far, I haven't found a UI in game where I wouldn't prefer a more streamlined interaction method. There are other inconsistent UIs: rotating my character in the Inventory is RMB, rotating my character in trying on clothes is side to side mouse movement (an input method I found unintuitive and unpleasant). Esc doesn't get me out of modal UIs, like in every other game ever, it only affects the main application menu: most players are habituated to using Esc to back out of modal interfaces before having it summon the main menu. These are all design decisions, not performance related problems, but they're also made much worse by poor engine performance. And performance is terrible for me: I've ordered more RAM, which I've been meaning to do anyway (going from 16 to 64GB) but wow. I hope the Star Engine update in the recent YouTube video has some significant perf improvements over Lumberyard. Given the layoffs at Amazon Games, I'm not sanguine about Lumberyard's future. UPDATE BASED ON RESPONSES: First, thanks for the mousewheel speed adjust for walking. I saw the tip for that for ships, but not the character. I have been having multiple text UIs (white text tips and what look like blue interaction choices) stomping on one another on the right side of my screen, so often the text is very hard to read; also, it hangs off the side of my screen in many resolutions. The UI also fails to redraw correctly frequently. I've also tried dropping my resolution to improve performance, and that has had readability impacts on the UI. Second, remember, I said I was commenting on UI/UX design choices. Early is when those are useful. They are less useful late in the process, when things are more polished. UI gets committed to, and isn't amenable to change later. Third, note I also asked for correction if I was missing something, so the sarcastic replies as if I were trying to be a know-it-all critic simply make me think you don't read carefully. Fourth, like I said in the post, that there exists an option somewhere doesn't excuse a poor default setting. Players almost never approach a game willing to work to make it fun: it needs to be pleasant from the jump. Fifth, this group collectively is self-selected for being willing to do much of what the vast majority of players are not. Workarounds you are inured to are things that really harm the new player experience, and lead to lower player count. Advocating for the naive player is advocating for the game's success. Defending the game against criticism of shortcomings is dooming it to be a tiny niche game. MMOs are much better with higher player population.