As it stands the system for cinema I feel is pretty un-user friendly. You can’t sit in seats because you go afk, meaning you can’t gain any XP. The only solution to this at the moment is to be constantly checking if you’ve went afk. I suggest something like the button prompts for slot machines, where occasionally you’ll have to press a button. This is a lot less intrusive. Alternatively have an icon that appears in the corner of your screen that shows when you go AFK, this means you won’t have to be constantly moving and can squiggle around your mouse a bit when you see this.
If you’re constantly pressing a random key, you can never go AFK 
2 Likes
good to know! i always walked left and right 
I wouldn’t say it isn’t “User Friendly.” AFK is just intrusive to the EXP System, which isn’t really the point of Theater anyways.
To be fair though, it can be annoying. A prompt like the casino would be the better option.
If not that option, I had this idea: Allow us to gain EXP only while something is playing. Perhaps give us a prompt to “accept” to watch the video as well, and the duration of the video will count towards EXP regardless of the game considering you “AFK”. This would still prevent people from idling, as they would have to be around to interact with a prompt.
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You can still play hour long videos so as long as you remember to do it every hour you can still exploit it.
I think this is where the devs would need to ensure some kind of balance. To be honest, being able to put on an hour long video in the public theater seems odd anyways. I could see maybe 20 - 30 minutes max.
And look at it this way, even the prompt system set up with the Casino can be exploited if you really wanted to.
3 Likes
I think that the only worthwhile compromise here would be to implement the AFK system, but with more frequent checks since there’s less user input required compared to the casino. It wouldn’t have to be a drastic change – maybe it could be every 10 minutes or so – just something that’s enough to discourage people from putting up hour long “lo-fi hip hop radio - smooth beats to study/sleep/relax” videos while they’re actually away from the computer, and wouldn’t punish anyone who’s actually watching and doesn’t want to / didn’t remember to move their mouse and jump every few seconds.
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I agree that 10 minutes would be the best amount of time.
I’d actually argue the opposite. The theatre is the one place in TU where you are actively encouraged to AFK (you’re just watching videos with buds), so I feel like constant checkups would get very annoying very quickly. The casino AFK system was primarily designed to dissuade macro use so as to prevent unit farming with macros, with kicking AFK players off of machines being a secondary thing. Sure, you could farm achievements and milestones for the theatre, but realistically it’s not lucrative and, as such, isn’t likely to be as big a target for macro use as the casino.
I don’t think there’s going to be a great way to enforce participation in a heavily hands-off activity like this. Frankly, I don’t think it’s something that really needs to be worried about.
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I do believe that something should be done so that you don’t have to touch the keyboard every minute to prevent going afk just to earn xp in theatre.
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An AFK exception to the XP / Achievements system should be made based on player’s location.
sometimes i won’t even bother going to theater and watch something, because typing your keyboard around or move your mouse 24/7 for not trying to be AFK gets really annoying and tiresome.
i came there to watch videos, not smashing things for no reason
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What about completely separating theatre and lobby exp, and then making the theatre exp unrestricted by afk? This means that someone who goes afk can only be caught out by other players. Doing this has less of a risk and means afkers are more limited. This means there wouldn’t be much in the way of prestige with milestone items, but makes it better for the majority of players. As it stands people who actually want to use to theatre properly arn’t really getting the exp due to the afk.