Automation for the default client

[VDZ]

Any particular reason why actions (like felling trees, building stuff, harvesting selected areas) should be aborted halfway? If not then it's just extra busywork to restart the action over and over that doesn't add to the experience but takes from it.

In the case of trees, it changes my behavior precisely because it's tedious, and that has further consequences on my gameplay. In Legacy, whenever I would hearth home without being at my carrying capacity (i.e., not lifting any item, or still empty slots left in boat) I would chop down a tree to hearth home with extra logs. This made building stuff much more convenient, particularly in caves. Now that chopping trees costs 2.5 stamina bars (which makes me not chop them even if I have the water in my inventory), I actually have to go out and collect wood whenever I want to build something requiring a lot of wood. It also changed the world compared to Legacy; there used to be logs everywhere due to people like me (chopping a tree and taking only a single log). Now those same people collect logs if they happen to already be on the ground without generating any new ones. This looks a lot neater, but also has the gameplay effect that you can't just easily find a log to chop some blocks or saw some boards from without actually having to go through the effort of chopping down a tree.

TL;DR: Deliberate tedium changes player behavior and this might be desirable.

[Granger]

TL;DR: Deliberate tedium changes player behavior and this might be desirable.

IMHO having to repeatedly click to simply restart something is bad design and needlessly wears down the tolerance toward further flaws in the product.

[Sevenless]

Intentional tedium as a game mechanic only really matters if bots were going to be cracked down on. As is currently (unless I missed something) intentional tedium is just going to get botted by those who want to. Arguably many of these features already exist in private clients, making them available on the main client is not forcing anyone to use them. They're already ignoring the availability of these automations. I'm all for tedium as a mechanic when used judiciously, but the botting problem makes it a very risky balance wise game mechanic.

Clicks wise, I'd opine that an ideal input is ~1 click per ~5-10s for repetitive tasks. Frequent enough to keep your attention, but slow enough that you're making more meaningful choices than "pick up beat 1, pick up beat 2".