A new proposal / FFA, Solo, ratings, points system...

you should still give A LOT to B, sorry (mistake above)

As per your proposal: if they arrive in order B, A, C, D, you REMOVE points from A, whereas he was 2nd?!

You said A was strongest. Lets say the ratings were (A,B,C,D): (2000,1600,1600,1200). If A finishes 2-3, he shall slighlly lose, thats normal. After the game, approximately: (1996,1608,1600,1196).

Well, why not, but just a reminder, a reform has just been implemented in FFA 10 days ago precisely making the 2nd win some points regardless! Because beforehand it used to be like you suggest, the strongest player had to win in order to earn points. 

I am just catching up on this thread, and I would strongly disagree on your proposal.

1/ You have the option to play 9 points queens, or 1 points queen. Why force to have all game the same now ? You want 9 points queen, play only 9 points queen games

2/ I strongly disagree on that point. The surviving player, that did absolutely nothing, should not be rewarded to do nothing. On a contrary, he should be penalized maybe. That's why the point system makes it fair for all players. It is not right that because you are under double attack, and that your opponent do nothing to defend you, you should be rewarded for that. Then all the games would be rigged, and the lucky player not under attack is guaranteed 3rd : BS

3/ It's not +5 for double check, but +1, and that's good enough.

4/ I disagree with rating changes. I think that we should have even more rating, one for each game pretty much, but it would be too much. I like the ratings the way they currently are.

Thanks @ARMAGEDDON-2020 for many ideas, I will reply to some of them.

I agree that Teams is doing fine, but there are multiple alternatives and potential improvements in addition to removing communication between teammates. Ideas that I consider interesting are:

- swapping the king and the queen for blue and green in the starting position.

- capture the king or other more accurate game ending mechanic

- double elimination

- imbalanced teams such as 3v1 and 2v1.

I also think the point system is better than a last man standing format, but I still think last man standing should exist as an option as it is a very intuitive way to have a FFA game and many people have expressed interest in it on the forum.

Pawn promotion in FFA is a difficult topic because it is not clear what the purpose is if we are not playing for survival. Indeed, if surviving long gave no advantage, would promoting a 1-point pawn into a 9-point queen even be good at all, or just potentially donating more points to your opponents? That is partly why I don’t dislike the 1-point queens; at least it is clear that promoting pawns is an advantage.

The issue for me with current promotion rules is that the endgame is heavily decided by who gets to promote, because the queen is such a powerful piece. Thus my suggestion to promote pawns into rooks instead: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/replace-1-point-queens-by-1-point-rooks

While it is good to consider other prizes for checkmate (https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/points-ffa), going from 20 to 15 or to 25 really does not change much. Removing a flank player first is good whether you get 5, 10, 15, 20 or 30 points for the checkmate. Besides, having different values for each mate makes little sense in cases where all players survive into the endgame or two mates happen right after each other. I prefer keeping the same value for every mate.

You claim that a high king value for 2^nd is an incentive not to wait in a corner. I believe it’s the other way around, a high king value makes you more interested in defending your own valuable king in a corner.

You argue that the last checkmate should be more valuable in order to reward the last man standing, which directly contradicts your opinion about last man standing in 1.b).

Going from 5 points to 3 points for double checks with non queen pieces sounds fair. Doesn’t change much, considering how rare such double checks are in standard. Triple checks basically never happen, so it’s whatever.

I’ve been thinking that the name of the resign button is somewhat misleading. With points, there are many cases where the best play is to “resign”, so you’re not really resigning. Now I’m not sure what the best replacement would be, maybe something along the lines of “pull out”.

I’m not against your suggestions here, especially the idea of two main time controls for format (one with increment and one with no added time per move) I like.

This topic has been discussed many times, your idea seems fine to me. The main point is put FFA and Solo together into one single format where high rated players play Solo (+3 -1 -1 -1). You use an old quote of mine, so I’d like to add that since the time I wrote that, I have modified my opinion. I think +3 -1 -1 -1 is the best option for FFA if no other parameters are changed. However, with other changes, a +3 +1 -1 -3  style format might still work. We need to experiment more with this.   

There are many things to say; I shall have to think and shall react later.

But I would like already to say that I definitely think that FFA and Solo should be re-merged, as it used to be 3 years ago. Beyond some level, it should be Solo automatically. WTA. (It used to be automatic beyond 1500 = 1800 today, but I think it should be 2000 instead).

I mean, higher is the weakest rating of the board, smaller should be the incentive to team up and to play for 2nd.

YES it should be done. Quite often I launch a game and it may take up to 20-30 min. to get the players in it. In the meantime it's not that difficult to forget about it, etc.

Solo vs FFA

There are many situation where you simply cannot finish first. Should you then just resign? Then you just give the win to certain player, which is not fair. Or choose a different winner by continuing, while gaining nothing yourself. The bottom or 3rd player should not have the possibility to decide the winner. There still might be ways to continue. So I am strongly against systems where 2nd place equals 4th. I always play FFA, never Solo. +6 -1 -2 -3 system seems like a good compromise.

Time controls

I like the delay. It is more natural for turn based games with more than 2 players. It is also used in poker. You have 10s per move + 1 minute reserve. It ensures you don't wait too long for any move, and feels good. With classic increment, players may accumulate time and then spend "hours" for a move. That isn't good. So please keep delay. For example: 15s+1 bullet, 30s+5 blitz, 1+15 rapid.

Double/Triple check

There shall be some "system", not arbitral values. Triple checks basically never happen, but if they do, it's not any skill, just mere coincidence, so it shall not be over rewarded, aesthetics aside. So 2check with queen +1, other piece +3, 3xcheck queen +3,
other piece +9. You see - system.

Checkmate

Here I'm not sure. Maybe the +15,+20,+25 points has some merits, but honestly I think checkmate is checkmate, so I vote always +20.

Stalemate

It is still sort of chess, right? Then you should "reward" stalemate the same for stalemating as stalemated, as is in chess. So I prefer current situation, +10 for stalemated played, +10 for remaining player, makes sense as it is basically draw and there is +20 for checkmate.

Promotion square

I always wondered why in 4PC you can promote so early. I understand it promotes activity, but there are better ways. I think the promotion should be moved to 11th row, without affecting the game too much. Going for promotion from move 1 is absurd and un-chess, this shouldn't be a legitimate strategy. Forced promoting to rook is similarly un-chess, feels just wrong.

1pt queens

9pt queens means rewarding opponents, which isn't good. So please keep 1pt queens, they are just pawns after all.

Opposing player pieces value

Why it wasn't discussed? Capturing opposing player's pieces shall be rewarded x2, as he is your natural ally. This would discourage to ally automatically and reward going against the opposite. Only there we have a true FFA. Currently, it's not really FFA, it a FFA/team hybrid, as you always should silently team with the opposite. In the moment any player is eliminated, the piece values return to normal.

Standard vs variants

Here I completely agree. There there should be single standard 4PC FFA with just different time controls, and variants for fun. Get rid of Solo.