I don’t like rust.
I don’t like building a full building inch by inch. I don’t like having to worry about eating too. I can’t speak to Palworld, but I don’t like rust’s empty world, devoid of NPC’s short of playing it coop with a lib. I don’t like literally every tiny thing having to be crafted, especially with it having its own little crafting subsystems like crafting firewood for fuel for a furnace which crafts materials that are used in another crafted device to craft something else. I also despise crafting and working farms.
One of the few mercies this game offers is Pals to pick up the pace.
I’m going to give it a chance but I’m already going in expecting to be disappointed.
One simple improvement would be being able to just plop down full buildings, but I don’t believe that’s possible at all.
As it stands right now, the survival mechanics are extremely forgiving. Resources are abundant, even the lowest grade food items (berries) provide enough to refill the bar fairly quickly. Building is still individual pieces, but you unlock them from the tech tree as a full set (wood) and each piece costs about 2 wood. Your pals can harvest these resources for you, and you can setup plots for specific resources that continuously refill.
Of course, most of the settings for survival are customizable at world creation (and afterward). I personally don’t like hunger mechanics in most survival games due to them tending towards “annoying bar that needs refilled every 5 minutes”. I have my hunger rate set at 0.5 (50%) and sometimes I even forget it exists.
It’s still very early in the game’s lifecycle, but it has a very good foundation.