Currently in the game, there is almost no real visual representation showing which pig you have nibbled out, or which chicken still has squeezing left to be squeezed, or which butterfly has been milked out. This makes resource gathering, especially for players with high levels of Animal Kinship, tedious and more-difficult-than-it-should-be. The details and solutions are outlined below:
The Problems:
♪ Current mouseover icons are useless to a keyboard/gamepad player, as they never show up if you aren't using your pointer.
♪ Current mouseover icons prioritize the broken heart (Pet Me!) icon, even when the player has Animal Kinship VI and higher (where you no longer need to pet them first); making it useless for quick nibble runs if you skip petting an animal altogether!
♪ Animal Pens such as the ones found in the backyard of modern homes, allowing up to 20(!) pigs at once, cause them to stack on top of each other. Even with mouseover icons, it's extremely difficult to pick out which animal is still needing help; The icon does not show in the "alt-tab" object selector when pressing "Enter" in a crowd of critters.
♪ Many times, people will name every animal on a street the same exact name; this behavior makes it even harder to tell which critter needs to be harvested out of the ones you've already done!
The Solutions:
♪ Add a feature to allow the user to press a button (like "Q", maybe) to desaturate (make greyscale) all animals that no longer can be nibbled, squeezed, or milked. (be sure to take into account that higher levels of AK allow us to do these verbs twice, rather than just once!)
♪ Prioritize the nibble and milk icons over petting and massaging when the player has enough skill in Animal Kinship to do so. Make these icons show up in the "alt-tab" object selector when pressing "Enter" in a crowd.
♪ Make the "alt-tab" object selector also display fully harvested animals in greyscale in the list, so the user doesn''t have to try and memorize the names of the animals that they saw needed attention (especially in cases where all the animals have the same name).
I believe a change of this magnitude would make the game a lot less tedious, and more fun for players dealing in the animal arts.