by VDZ » Sun Jan 15, 2017 6:03 am
I think the feeding mechanic itself is more problematic. There is nothing fun whatsoever about having to wait an arbitrary random amount of time for the animal to stop fucking around and eat your clover. All you do is wait until it's over. There's no challenge, there's no legitimate way to bypass the tedium (higher skills, better items etc), all it gives you is the feeling that your time is being wasted for no reason whatsoever. The animation is the icing on the cake; not only are you waiting for an arbitrary amount of time, the game tells you 'hey, it's about to accept the clover...JK IT RUNS AWAY it'll take at least another 15 seconds' which is incredibly frustrating.
It's for this reason that everybody just cheeses the system by walking right up to the animal before feeding the clover, which being an exploit is rather clumsy to do; you need to walk in such a way that you'll be right next to the animal, then click the clover from your inventory and right-click the animal (which is generally a wide yet exact mouse movement and thus frustrating to do quickly). Screw it up, and you'll be exposed to the aforementioned 'normal' behavior.
Can't this just be changed to having right-click on the animal with clover under the cursor making your hearthling walk up to the animal and feed it the clover? Once that part becomes less frustrating, having to follow the animal for a bit to actually execute the clover action (milking, shearing, riding) would feel like a normal, acceptable required effort.