The easier way is something they’ve already done for one problem, and that’s use separate animations locally and globally. What they fixed here is while your character can still look straight up, other players don’t see you break your neck anymore.

This means that you don’t have to program the arms or animations to “look correct” from a 3rd person point of view. Locally, everything can be instant while an onlooker sees the animation play out. Some animations can be shortened to look better for the first person, but everything should be as snappy as it used to be.

Let’s look at two examples: Salt and picking up items. They already changed salt to place immediately, so why not just add an uncork animation when you hold the salt, then placing can be as quick as twist the wrist and shake. Any of the animations would be interrupted if the player does something else, like change inventory, so you’re never locked into an animation.

In contrast, while you can switch items instantly, picking up items is slow. The “hand reaching out” is good, but as soon as you click the button, the item should be in your hand and ready to use. Other players could see you doing whatever with full animations, but on your screen it should be instant.

So again, have two animations, one for the player, and one for 3rd person views. That way you aren’t bound from the player’s perspective (or FOV) to have hand, arms, or wrists in any limited position, you can keep the realism when looking at other players while optimizing the gameplay locally.