I was looking at something and if we have both game mode and landing site as variants, we would have 16 different run variants. Also seeing as the Game Mode does not really add anything except the speed of draining of stats, it really doesn't add much difference to the runs. So unless the community is really insistent that they want different game modes, I propose we just stick with Standard difficulty for the 4 different landing sites, that way we just have 4 different run variants for First Steps rather than 16.

Old thread but just to address this post-1.0 because it will almost inevitably be raised again - there is I think merit in having the game mode variations on longer runs, but not really for the shorter First Steps category.

Number of variants by itself should not be a stopping point for different boards, but what matters more is how much it changes the run. Intense does not really change things enough, so feels understandable to be ignored.

Hardcore is a bit more extreme on the modifiers, and I think the increased power requirement alone can make for some significant differences across a longer run for higher terraforming stages. But that it gets a lot of its early game difficulty from its preset starting zone of the Meteor Crater, so I think the disconnection there is no longer having different landing sites multiplying the boards, since they are less significant over a longer run anyway as the map opens up - only in the opening stages, which is what First Steps is for.

Creative is a completely separate experience entirely, since it is focused solely on exploration and execution as opposed to inventory or power management.

So I think it fair to say that other game modes may make more sense in different implementations, with Creative kept completely separate to have alternative goals that play to its unique strengths.