Hey, thanks for your feedback! I'm happy you had fun with the game so far!
Fast travel between specific spots in the world will come eventually. Once the world grows in size :)
I agree that choosing your character's species would be great and I'd love to do that. However it requires a lot of work with a completely different kind of storytelling. So right now the focus is really getting all the core mechanics in the game and then, depending on the popularity of this demand, reconsider character customization.