And by that I mean the invisible "bubble" around items that allow the player to interact, ie, get close enough to the harpoon and you can use it. These can sometimes be inconsistent and conflict in screwy ways.
For example, how many people run into the map room of a sloop from the upper deck to use the map and wind up toggling the light over the map even when you're staring right at the map and the light isn't even in the field of view? That's happened to me on far more than one occasion. I stop moving and hit the F key when the map is in range. Light comes on. I hit F again. I use the map.
Or that fun case of harpooning loot out of the water. Harpoon it, grab it, drop it on deck behind you, rinse and repeat. Except that sometimes you end up grabbing an item behind you that isn't even visible instead of the item on the harpoon right in front of you. Sometimes if the angle is right I turn on the lantern that's barely visible to the left instead of grabbing the item right in front of me on the harpoon.
On one occasion, I ran down to the hold of the sloop and tried to grab an item on top of the vanity chest. My field of view was centered just above that item and I had never looked directly at the vanity chest, yet it opened the vanity chest when said item was much closer, both in proximity to the "eyes" of my pirate and to the center of the field of view.
I think this is another server-tracked interaction that doesn't always catch up with the player in time. It's like hitreg for items. It explains why sometimes ladders of ships you're trying to board whiz right past you without ever letting you grab them even though you're looking right at it and are more than close enough. It's not my ping, either, which usually hovers between 50-60ms.
And maybe this isn't a popular opinion, but I feel an unintended side effect of the way interaction bubbles work is the quickrun/quickswim mechanic. Drop the item you're carrying, run/fast swim for a split second while you hold the "pick up" button, and somehow grab the item that's five feet behind you, rinse and repeat to move faster than just walking/swimming with the item. It doesn't make physical sense. Are pirates really just Stretch Armstrong dolls? I feel like this wasn't something that Rare intended, but it worked out that way and they never really fixed it.
