Premium Membership to select own player in team

I really don't understand why premium membership is needed to select a member in team 4 player chess. I mean if you look at bughouse there's no need for premium memberships to select your friend. My friend and I were really excited about team mode but because we don't have premium membership we can't play which is really disappointing.

I understand @Jake_Paul7. It was a tough decision to make part of 4 Player Chess premium, especially when we need our player base to grow. In order to explain the justification for this, I first need to say that 4 player chess is not chess. It is certainly chess-like, but all of the training tools and videos and lessons we have on Chess.com don't do a scrap of good when it comes to 4 Player Chess. There is no reason for a player who is primarily a 4 Player Chess player (we have many now) to upgrade to a premium membership if the tools we offer will not help them. That leaves 4 player chess in a very bad place, with money going out, and nothing coming in.

In order to continue to develop and improve 4 Player Chess, it needs to be sustainable. We really love this game, but love only goes so far when it comes to writing code and developing a product. So I will ask you what I am asking all 4 player chess fans (those who are reading this now.) Help us build it. Help us make it better. Membership is as little as $30 a year. You and your friend can get a lot of milage out of that $30, but more importantly, it helps move 4 player chess forward.

Thanks for your understanding. I hope we can also get your support.

Well that seems fair enough

That's a pretty good reason.

$30/year seems a bit costly to me, if the only thing you want is to play 4PC teams with your buddy. Something like $5 one-time fee would seem more fair to me.

so, i becaume premium yesterday for the first time, mainly because i do want to support 4pc. For me personally, €2.50/month is not alot at all. Another reason was that i always use an adblocker, thus not contributing at all, so now my consience is clean

@ignoble, I just paid $29 for the membership today. The question is: How will you understand that you've got this money because I like 4 Player Chess and respect John ( @battleMind24 )? There is no option to pay for 4 Player Chess only, there is no question about the reasons I pay. You could ask something like "Do you want to get more lessons? Do you want to solve more tactics? Do you want to support 4 Player Chess Development?"

P.S.

Now don't tell me you have no money.  

I would say that already increasing the traffic on chess.com is a gain for the site, and 4-players chess players are subject to advertising as all the others chess players

the same logic could have been used with bughouse or the other variants, they are nothing like chess but there is no premium required

however I understand what chess.com wants

i think of premium not only as getting more features, but also supporting chess.com with all that they do for chess, like titled tuesdays, death matches, teams championships, speed chess championships, all with commentators which also need to be paid. frankly i sometimes wonder how they pay for it all.

a question, yesterday i noticed that every player in titled tuesday was diamond. do all titled players get diamond for free? ( i thought it was only GMs). if so, i can see the point. surely almost every titled player will join chess.com, and submit his title -> good image for chess.com, 'the place to be'      don't get me wrong i love lichess,  chess.com is too slow for bullet imo

@ lines, all titled players get free diamond membership.

@BabYagun, you joined for the 4-player-chess benefits, but there's a lot of other benefits.  For example, you can now create a club.  Don't be surprised if you start to use a few of the other benefits.

@MGleason, you are absolutely right. But it is the 4 Player Chess that motivated me to pay, not other benefits. And chess.com team should collect this sort of the information if they want to earn more. For example, I do not care if chess.com will stop creating new chess lessons. So they can not motivate me to pay more (upgrade from Gold Membership to whatever level they have next) by adding new chess lessons. But if they will write: "@battleMind24 is starving and his trainers sole just fell off",- I will pay. They should know how to manipulate us (their user base), thus they need to know what we like and want.

I also just decided to pay for the membership and I'm happy to contribute.

@ignoble can you imagine developing those kind of value-adding features for 4PC? Could just as easily ask @Wraku89, for example, if he's interested in making some training videos, and make those Premium. Further down the line of course there could be all sorts of training tools too.

That paywall decision is an interesting one, great if it brings in enough to justify putting resources into the development, but inviting a friend could also be quite a strong user generator.

Fun times

does the inviting player always get red? huge advantage imo, don't think it's right.

why do you need it?

I agree with choosing your teams requiring a premium membership. It is just like so many other perks of a chess.com membership. Maybe I'm biased because I already have a membership and like to support chess.com, but it just makes sense.