For example, if in this specific moment I were to type 600, the line would draw 600 from the extension corner (making the line as long as it needed to be to sit 600 from the corner). In the AutoCAD Classic Workspace you could place a vertex x distance from a corner by just typing the number. The source of my grief is the behaviour of polylines and the extension object snap difference between the two workspaces.
Whilst I can migrate it and solve all of my problems, that isn't what I want to do - i'd rather move into the Drafting and Annotation workspace and hopefully modify whichever setting is causing me grief on this. So i've recently switched over to ACAD2015 and have decided to embrace the changes, such as the loss of the AutoCAD Classic workspace.