I know its too late to submit an idea but this just clicked to me and I am posting it here since it is not allowing me to add it as an idea.
Hope its fine with you all...
This idea revolves around selection of mating entities during assembly.
A pop-up (or flyout) window "mate-easy" is displayed while doing mates in assembly session, enabling easy selection of oppositely located mating surfaces.
It's like a camera, displaying only opposite view of first selection.
This reduces rotating-zooming of parts while mating.
When doing multiple mates, this tool can save some time.
For example, think of a newton's cradle where multiple coincident mates are required to accomplish the assembly....
Hope its worth considering.
Not bad... In the meantime, I suggest you use "select other". Map it to a shortcut key. It's a very easy way to select the "face 2" in your example with no rotating or zooming.
Little known fact... While "select other" is active, right-clicking on any face will hide that face so you can select what's behind it. There's no limit to the number of faces you can right-click and hide during the command. Of course, once you select something, the faces pop right back.