King capture instead of checkmate rules discussion

Okay, so this has come up a bunch of times, let's have a good ole discussion. It seems like a lot of people (me included) agree that to get the 20 points, you should have to actually capture the king, not put it in mate position. There are two options to make this work, game design wise:

First off, you only get 20 points when you capture a king, combined with either:

1) No checks, you can still move when in check or even mate

2) If a player is put in mate position, they get force-resigned

EDIT: as noted below, for option #2 to work, you probably want to reward any leftover kings on the board to the last player standing.

I personally prefer option two, it makes the most sense. If I mate someone, their pieces turn grey, except for the king. I only get the 20 points upon capturing the king.

This fixes a whole host of current game problems, where people will get into really complicated mating situations that grind the game to a halt, because they are fighting over who gets the mate. Instead, it should be a royal scramble over who gets the king.

Let's discuss at length just this part before we tackle other things like the point system, I think it's a separate issue.

I actually like the idea of playing until my king is captured.  If that was the rule, then obviously the points would come at capture, not mate, as there would be no such thing as mate.

Yeah, I think playing until capture is really interesting, but I think it would move us too far away from chess as a game maybe, that's why I personally prefer force-resignation and points on capture instead.

One really interesting side effect of no checks though, is that the king could become way more active as a piece, which is very thought-provoking indeed.

I was not aware of the second option/idea. It is certainly interesting. I consider it to be an improvement over the current system, where the mating points often goes to the one that does the least amount of aggression.
Pros: Preserves the familiar mating concept. Rewards the primary aggressor.
Cons: Introduces the possibility of stealing an undeserved win by the player who does not deliver the mate, by resigning immediately after the mate, and before the capture of the king.

The first option/idea is even more interesting, and opens a whole lot of possibilities. For example checkmating a king will no longer be a zero cost operation, since the checkmated king can still move and capture the checkmating piece (often a queen). Even worse, the recapture of the king will not be guarantied, since the other two players could interfere in various sneaky ways, and create havoc on the board. So the value of the king will need to be adjusted to a higher number of points, to compensate for the increased cost and risk of the king-capturing operation.
Pros: Rewards the primary aggressor. Opens exotic possibilities. Increases the complexity of the game. Direct and intuitive as a concept.
Cons: Discards the familiar mating concept, alienating newcomers.

@Skeftomilos Can you explain the con for option #2? Resigning when you're ahead is already a strategy due to the point system, I don't think this would further aggravate that, unless I'm missing something. Can you give me a step-by-step of how that would work?

Oh, just another question: should the last surviving player get the points for any leftover kings on the board? I think that's not the case right now, right?

Not the case but probably should be. 

@Gilberreke here is an example:
Player1 has 1 point (has captured a pawn)
Player2 has 0 points
Player3 has 0 points
Player4 has 0 points
Player1 checkmates and then captures the king of Player3, reaching 21 points.
Player2 checkmates Player4
Player1 resigns immediately, and takes the first place, one point ahead of Player2.
The normal continuation of the game would be for players 1 and 2, having almost the same number of points after capturing one king each, to fight to the death until one is checkmated. Player1 avoided the fight and declared himself the winner by resigning at exactly the right moment.

aha, so my suggestion of rewarding any leftover kings to the last player standing would fix that?

@Gilberreke Yes! :-)

I think rewarding all left over kings at end is a different suggestion to admin's? (even though it plays into this discussion). Point is for that part at least would be nice to suggest that on its on and see if there is traction with making that change now regardless of any other changes. I think it would solve some outstanding issues (and lower my score since I use it ) haha but I'm good with what's best for the game. 

Should I make a different thread for that?

I made another topic for it, since I don't like stalemates in general when there are 3+ players left, but just a note that this suggestion (either variant) would also fix stalemates being odd. You can hardly call a stalemate a draw and reward points to the stalemated player, when there are still other players left. 

What do you guys think should happen on stalemate with option #2? In my opinion, with 3+ players left, it should be a force-resignation, with 2 players left, it should be a draw. Is that correct?

The other option, which is maybe better, is that a stalemate with 3+ players just force-resigns the player, but also the king, no points are granted.

@Gilberreke my preference would be: force-resignation, with the dead kind retaining his value, including the case of 2 players in the game. Which means that with 2 players left, stalemating will be equivalent to checkmating. Not consistent with normal chess, but consistent with the non-drawish nature of this variant.

I think that's my current preference too @Skeftomilos

I'd like to see where the devs lean currently on this issue. @battleMind24 ?

I guess that the devs have lost track of all these suggestions we make daily, so they are focusing on more mundane (but equally important) tasks like implementing premoving or something. :-)

What is the point of premoving when playing with a delay?

Premoving may give me the time to skip a turn, so I can go to drink some water or something during the game. The current tempo of the game is very fast, and doing anything else while playing is almost impossible.

The rules of four player chess explicitly prohibit drinking water while playing.