Eliminate all non-environmental directional indicators

[Vinter Nacht]

On the server that I play on, there's a drive to eliminate all methods of identifying where you are and what direction you're facing outside of landmarks and environmental indicators like the sun.  However, there is a plethora of meta-methods that can indicate which direction you're facing.  On this list are:

Crocks always face the same way when placed in ground storage. (I imagine this applies to ground storage in general) - Appears fixed in the next patch.
Claims tell the user what their coordinates are.
Clayforms and knapping, just to name a couple examples, always place in the same direction, and the 'copy last layer' always fills from the same cardinal direction.

Given the efforts being made to create a survivalist experience where in-game tools (such as a compass, the sun, sextants, etc) are the only methods of identifying your place and facing in the world, it would be wonderful if something could be done to address these issues and, further, to ensure they don't crop up in future iterations.

I realize this would be a low priority for game design in general, but it is definitely impacting the ability to create the desired survivalist experience.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Vinter Nacht

[Thorfinn]

If there were some consistency there, sure. My mousing skills up/down are vastly better than left/right, so I try to orient myself to minimize my weaknesses, whether knapping shovels or forming anvil molds. If the same axis were "away from me", that would be fine. I would not like to have to move after placing every axe head, depending on an RNG deciding which way the stone laid down.

 

[Vinter Nacht]

7 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

If there were some consistency there, sure. My mousing skills up/down are vastly better than left/right, so I try to orient myself to minimize my weaknesses, whether knapping shovels or forming anvil molds. If the same axis were "away from me", that would be fine. I would not like to have to move after placing every axe head, depending on an RNG deciding which way the stone laid down.

 

Ideally they would always place down relative to the direction you're facing, like any (most) block.

[Ashery]

Sign posts are another easy way to game direction. When you use a pigment item on one, you're given the option of eight different directions (North, Northwest, etc) without any need to orient yourself.

There's an easy enough fix for this, though: The recipe for sign posts becomes simpler, just two sticks, with the player adding boards to a placed sign post by right clicking. Placed boards would point towards the player when placed. This has the additional benefit of enabling signs oriented in different directions than the eight main ones.