Planets seem to lack diversity since the Koala builds

Dunno about it, additional obstacles on previous tier planet in upper tiers could be awesome. Want to explore a "jungle" type planet in "volcanic" tier? Welcome to extreme amount of carnivorous lifeforms! Toxic rains and geysers, poisons vapors, extreme humidity that hinders your progress and damage your equipment - everything to you liking. Want to visit ocean planets in higher tiers? Welcome to atmosphere-less planet with a shell of frozen ice, and dark and dangerous ocean deep down, full of strange lifeforms and precious ore from meteorites... Seemingly harmless desert planet? What about one huge primitive organism living in caves system that cover entire planet, that want YOU to become part of it?
I think Starbound was supposed to be about such encounters, not about visiting a hundred of copy\paste planets. I know such variety is almost impossible to achieve, but some work could be done in that direction.

 

I was thinking a cold alpine forest taiga, based off of forests and jungles we already have.

THANK GOODNESS I'm so tired of having my planets in snow systems ruined by bright red and green monsters

 

At this point, I don't take ANYTHING in the game right now as final. We've seen them go back and revamp all manner of features both small and large --from weapon looks to monster styles to adding new monster types and resetting the whole damn universe-- as their vision for the game coalesces, and we know they're gonna keep working on it well past "1.0". Seems like they've been working mostly on getting broad-strokes function down, giving enough stuff IN said functions to keep us from getting bored too fast, then will go back and polish and fill as they move forward and they can devote more time to such things.

Again, we just don't normally get to see the sausage being made like this.