I don't think anyone ever posted about this: often your avatar automatically takes a little step to the side when you click to perform an action, often a step to a place inconvenient or unwanted. Why?
When you click on the game window, your character automatically tries to move to the closest location to that spot that it can reach without jumping. I guess this is true even when that click is on an object with an interaction menu - it still registers it as a "movement click" on the game window.
Your character also attempts to move into proximity to perform the action in question - so if you click a minable rock, and select an action, your character will move toward the rock in an attempt to get into mining range. Flying NPCs, like butterflies, will attempt to move toward you to allow interaction if you can't reach them.
You can avoid unnecessary movement clicks by using the Enter key to bring up an object's interaction menu when it's close enough to be highlighted with a blue aura.
Thanks Doc, but this isn't what I mean. I use Enter. It has to do with the animation. If you can click on a piece of sparkly and open the menu, why does the avatar have to move when you click "mine"? Often you are automatically moved closer to another pile of rock that you don't want to mine, one with which you've already chosen not to interact. It happens all the time with all sorts of animated actions-- watering, hoeing, scraping, etc..
I find the automatic shift annoying, especially after I've purposely placed myself in a specific position to perform an action.
And sometimes the animation pushes you off a cliff.
Your avatar moves when you select the "mine" action because you can actually highlight a rock outside of the range you can actually mine it, so your Glitch will attempt to move closer to the rock in order to properly interact with it. If that carries you off a cliff, well, that would be a bug/design flaw. That particular rock's placed far too close to the cliff in question and needs to be scooted back a little away from the edge, to ensure that your Glitch doesn't autowalk off it when moving around the target.
Personally though, I've never had the same problem as you've described, rothko. I've seen my Glitch move to one side or the other of an object he's interacting with, but never walk any significant distance away from it unless I accidentally click the mouse. When using the Enter key, the only time my Glitch would ever move away from an intended object is if some other interactable darts briefly into range and I accidentally select it.
Yes rothko I know what you're talking about...most noticeably in barnacle scraping. I'm always falling off the ledges and whatnot but when it happens with the trees it doesnt make too much difference I feel.
Yes, I've experienced this too. Sometimes it's annoying, like when it forces me off a cliff to the bottom of an area and I have to climb back up to do something else I also wanted to do in that spot that I fell from. This moving thing would be a lot more annoying if we lost our ability to interact with an object as we got farther away from it; as of right now, as long as the object that we want to interact with is in our viewable screen, we can still interact with it after we've clicked it and fallen off the ledge.
Barnacle scraping is where this is most noticeable for me, too. I compensate by standing in the center of a platform, rather than on the edge, so that when the game moves me backwards, I don't fall down. It also comes into play when collecting fireflies: sometimes I'm so far from the jar I've just opened that I can't see it anymore. It's mostly annoying when I'm lagged, which makes accurate motion difficult, so jumping back into position takes a while.
yeah, i have run into this problem a bunch of times. sometimes it's mildly inconvenient, when it puts me close enough to highlight another nearby object, and i am usually able to find a better spot to stand. sometimes it is more frustrating, when falling off a platform when scraping, mining, or whistling for fireflies.
it would be nice if the re-orienting of positioning would take into account how close you are standing to a platform edge so as to not drive you over the edge, so to speak :)
i had that too. in fact, my avatar ran off to t he left down the steps in that world i can't remember... something about a ladder? it ran all the way down the steps and i had to force it to go back up the stairs by hitting the cursor constantly until it climbed the ladder and then if finally stopped
I don't know if i call this a problem, but i would be interested if it changed. There are a few spots (the rock right next to the street sign at the bottom of the other drop being the one that first comes to mind)
One thing that sorta goes hand in hand with part of this problem is if the default item you interact with is the one you previously did - this would solve some of the "opps I meant the other thing" problems, like pulling up a tree menu, using the street sign when you're mining, or even save some of the chickens or batterflies getting in your damn way.
I paid attention to this last test and I think the reason for it is so that the avatar will get out of the way of the action animation. For instance: I particularly noticed this effect when scraping barnacles from ledges, because I would fall off a ledge if I scraped one too close to the edge (this can be prevented by clicking on the barnacle when standing on the opposite side of it from the ledge). The barnacle scraper animation appears at a specific spot when doing this, and if the avatar didn't move in some cases it would be standing in front of/behind this animation, which I presume the devs were trying to avoid by repositioning the avatar. It certainly is annoying to fall off a ledge because of it: otherwise, I don't really notice the repositioning (or care).
Your avatar always takes a step aside, but most of the time that's not really a problem. When it makes you fall down a platform (=problem) I would file a bug report. That's what I meant diapoza.
The automated stepping adds a level of frustration to routine play so frequently for me that it is the animation design I am questioning.
We need such precise control of our avatar to jump and race, for instance; but hoeing patches, harvesting adjacent trees, mining clustered rocks require constant and tedious repositioning of the avatar because it has gone out of the player's control.
@Voctiria - but the stepping aside is a frequent irritation in a number of common scenarios. I regularly perform an action on a tree (pet, for example) only to have the avatar step aside so far that I have to move again in order to get within range to perform a second action. My 'every ten seconds' might have been a slight exaggeration but the problem is far from uncommon.
For specific examples, it's very often a problem with wood trees (too small) and in East/West Spice (trees too close together).