@Wes.ElQushairy
the issue is the app is trying to pick objects away from the mouse
Well that's a different issue then, if Max is selecting objects that are not under the mouse cursor when you click. That is definitely not normal behavior. Are you very far from the objects you are trying to select and does it change accuracy of selection when you zoom in? The only other thought I have is are your scene objects very far from the origin? As you probably know, Max accuracy suffers at very far distances from the origin and there is a relationship to how you have your Scene Units set up.
is there a threshold maybe for this? is this some kind of smart selection feature?
No threshold that I am aware of, but the accuracy of selection seems sometimes to be affected by how closely zoomed in you are to the objects and Max accuracy generally would suffer if your objects are very far from the origin.
To get a feel for how the repeat click selection should work, I suggest you create a new Max scene and make say 25 copies of an object all in the same place. Then zoom in so the objects fill the view port and repeatedly click on the highlighted Object(s) without moving the cursor . You should observe the object selection cycling through all 25 objects very quickly.
But if you are not getting that expected behavior, then something likely is different about your scene. Maybe if your objects are imported from other programs, the surface normals are messed up in some way and max is having a hard time selecting them? What version of Max are you using and what scene unit setup?