4pc is dying -- do we care??

Hey yall,

No one plays 4pc in case you haven't noticed.  People need motivation to play.  There are three primary motivators: money, fame, and power.  4pc has no money, so that's off the table, and playing 4pc doesn't result in gaining power either, so all we have left is fame.  

All you need to do is have there be seasons of 4pc.  What I mean is every few months or so everyone's rating resets as well as the leaderboards.  Players will be required to play a certain number of games to see their name on the leaderboard or get a world rank.  Right now 3500 seems insurmountable, but reset the rating every once in a while, and all sorts of new players and old players will want to try to get their name towards the top.  Ratings mean nothing in 4pc, why not utilize them to motivate people to play?  

If we care about 4pc then we should try new things.  It's that simple.

Thanks for reading

We could host regular arenas like custom variants does

To be blunt, hard to have fame if there are 100 leaderboards (with equal weights).

I would also be curious as to your opinion on the current "fun" of play

What about having fun? I don't car about money, power, or fame. I do this for fun.

Most people look at the ffa no? I'm just suggesting this for ffa btw

OK 4pc is fun, but clearly not fun enough. This makes it more fun

Caleb I think you can easily say "well x may not work because of y" but my point is we need to be trying stuff if we actually give a flying bleep

First off, despite what my comments may suggest, I am in favor of the idea. My point is this: the issues surrounding 4pc are structural and so making "fixes" that dont address those structural issues are not likely to work. To be specific, as an example, the variants playing pool is diluted, as you have 100+ variants with close to equal weights. We need solutions that actually address issue such as that

....meanwhile this change may or may not incentivize the same players who have been playing the past 3+ years. But I think its clear that a. A change such as this will not attract new players nor. B dramatically change the number of players already playing.

And to reiterate a change such as this would be good, but i just don't believe it would move the needle all that much

Fair point— what do you think those issues are?

I also think it would increase the total number of players currently playing— maybe we would need another way to attract new players, but I think we can have older players playing again. But this is all speculative, who really knows. Again we have to try new things or do new things

Generally, as a community member, it is disappointing that issues have not been addressed for three years, but I hope and ask that the administration will approach these issues in the future.

Variants suffers from oversaturation. The 100+ variants & time controls do not differentiate themselves (at a macro level), and, as such, it is harder to generate community and players for any one variant because everybody is too spread out.

There are some specific ways this manifests. There are ~120 variant leaderboards at the moment, with all of them (and their variants) being given the same weight, and so there is less gravity and importance with respect to any one variant or rating system. It is not an accident that FIDE has only 6 rating systems, lichess has less than a dozen variants, popular games typically have only a couple of modes etc...there is no importance, no exclusivity, and so you have the current situation.

As for why it is this way, variants appears to go for models similar to steam, roblox, board game arena, etc. I think that is feasible, but for any one variant to be popular and transcend variants as a whole, then there needs to be delineations between variants. There are multiple tangible solutions to this problem, that I can list as desired.

The second problem is that 4pc is not, in my opinion, currently running with optimal mechanics. I am not convinced that the starting position is the best, but the bigger issue in my mind is that the rating system is not optimized to present the user with exciting and fair games. I would appreciate other perspectives on this, but one specific issue I find is that 4th, -3, which attempted to incentivize good opposites, has done the opposite at all but the highest level. Players play safe (so boring), are willing to betray, and are able to maintain a high rating without good teaming skills. My current theory is something around 2400-2800 +3 +1 -1 -3, which hard switches to solo +3 -1 -1 -1 at 2800, though there are clear downsides to that as well. The time control mess also is not optimized in my opinion.

There are other issues; variants ui needs to be improved (though I understand other things are the priority), specifically the way seeks and rating ranges are done needs to be improved. Your above suggestion probably should be done. Better tournament system etc.

But the above two main issues I think are the main things to investigate

If you need a new player, I am that person. I have tried 4pc, but not online. To be honest, it seems scary and overwhelming.

If you want to attract new players, try this. Make a short lesson on 4pc, not too long, but just enough to convince new players the it's not that scary.

IT IS SCARY!!!

Wow, thanks a lot :rofl

hello

Lol same for me when I started -- I had no clue what I was doing -- I think there are forum topics about 4pc strategy -- maybe link to them could be provided on the server?

Thanks for your input! I actually disagree with your overall concern about variants, but I see it as being an issue of some degree, just not a huge one. I agree with the rating concern -- most people when starting probably get very annoyed when they get no rating for second, and they avoid fourth at all costs as you say. 4/0 in my opinion should be standard, like 3/0 is in in 2pc. But like I said before, I actually think 4pc needs to motivate people to play. 4pc has problems, but I think you can overcome these problems or any future problems by using the ffa leaderboard to motivate people, maybe I'm alone in this but for me trying to increase my rank was an external reason for me to play -- not the only reason -- 4pc is fun. 4pc for most people is not that fun right off the bat compared to 2pc imo, but after you play a little bit it and understand the strategy it becomes more fun. What you need is a hook, just like in music, something to keep people playing. "Oh look, it's a new season, the leaderboard restarted, I'm gonna start grinding," or from a new player "wait, the highest rated is 2000? I can get that high no problem."