For me it is absolutely limiting your exposure to other players until you play through the game yourself. I think it stifles your own creativity and you get into a "replicate" other peoples work.

I am nearing the end of my first full play through of factorio. I landed on Aquilo last night.

For me ...

Ive found that with 4 productivity modules in each mush and jelly factory i have soo many seeds to the point i need to put in place a recycler to handle the over flow

My goodness! I have to say Gleba nearly broke me.

Up until this planet. You have not be negatively penalised for a less then optimised production design. Generally speaking on all the planets up until this one point you either a) you under produced a item it slowed down production times for that ...