Easier Climbing and Ledge Grabbing

Or maybe, if you must, require that the player tap the F Use button to grab onto the edges of platforms on a just-missed jump much like you would for a ladder, but make it a snappy and smooth move that is almost as good as fully making the jump.

Whatever the exact required input is about half the time grabbing a ladder fails when it should not, ie when you clearly pressed the button in time while easily within grabbing range. The window within which you can grab hold of a ladder in a jump, even just one that is stationary, is much MUCH too narrow.

And the same goes for missed jumps onto platforms as I have explained above.

I don't know what "ladder juking" is, but if you mean it should be harder to get onto ladders then NO, absolutely not. The opposite of that.

It very much DEFINITELY is too hard to grab ladders when like 5/10 jumps from ship to pier miss a ladder despite spamming the use button while clearly facing and touching said ladder. I cannot count the number of times I've seen the ladder climb prompt flash by while pressing the use button to climb and I still fell instead of climbing. This is BAD and the game would be greatly improved if this was fixed.

If you knew anything about platform game design you would know these kinds of input windows (in a game that aims for good-feeling movement mechanics) should be as generous as possible. Currently this specific part of the game feels terrible.

@sshteeve Though we disagree on this point thanks for at least acknowledging my experience of the problem instead of telling me I'm just playing wrong and the game is perfect as it is (which is what I mostly seem to be getting on this forum, instead of actual responses to suggestions).

Regarding making boarding too easy, a possible solution would be to only make the grabbing window more generous on stationary ladders. That way it would leave the difficulty of boarding a moving ship unchanged but would make climbing onto piers and the like considerably more straightforward.

I think that could be a good compromise.

@sweetsandman I don't know about any specific ping numbers but my internet connection is not especially great - it varies - so it's certainly possible drops in connection speed make this problem worse.

I'm definitely not advocating changing the interaction distance for ALL objects (that would create an avalanche of bugs and bad unintended interactions)... just for this specific situation, making it easier to grab hold of (non-moving) ladders and edges of platforms when it seems like you were easily close enough to make that jump or grab that ladder.

Similar to "coyote-time" in platformers that lets you jump for a brief moment while you were technically already in the air, but still close enough that it looked like you should have been able to jump, essentially fudging a grace period for reaction time, giving the player a more generous window for things like this feels right and makes for more enjoyable movement.