You need to pause idle animation of the one character AND only when mouse cursor hovers. At this moment make the curently focused character as "foremost" so it cant be covered by someone else idle animation. Current target loose focus when mouse cursor is moved to x/y coordinates which are off the focused character.
I like this implementation. The problem is that the specific item being targeted moves. This is a specific solution. Stopping that specific animation feels like a reasonable interface fix.
For when you're trying to target a rat and it keeps moving. Once you target it, maybe it should try to wait for you? And realistically, once you decide to talk to someone, then they should feel comfortable approaching you as well -- instead of it all being one-sided.
experienced yet another issue that needs a pause. In the phantom forest, where the floating fireballs one-shot your entire party if you don't range them down first... I'm having a very difficult time targeting them and getting off an attack command before they enter combat (and once in combat, they seem to always win the initiative roll).
I haven't experienced this part of the game yet, but the problem here is that the line between non-combat and combat is being blurred. You want the benefits of being in combat (casting offensive spells) without the downsides (waiting for your turn, being attacked).
You're trying to do something the game wasn't designed for.
The game
does actually struggle with the transition from combat to non-combat. There are many occasions where I'd be in a dialogue leading up to combat and my co-op partner will cast a summon immediately before the combat begins. This is something we do deliberately, but it doesn't really fit within the spirit of how combat in D:OS is designed.
So I think that what Larian need to do for D:OS2 is re-examine how they tackle the problem of transitioning from non-combat to combat, because at the moment there are tactics that feel like cheating.
XCOM actually had a similar problem with transitioning from non-combat to combat. The most tactical way to approach combat actually felt pretty cheap. They've recognised this and with XCOM 2 they've explicitly built gameplay around this transition phase (with gameplay allowing you to sneak up on and ambush enemies). This means that this part of the game should hopefully be much better balanced.
