This needs to be said.

TL;DR, added by a CGA: Two-player (2P) variants are slowly becoming more popular than four-player (4P) variants, both in terms of games played and new variant creation. 4P variants are harder to create and test than 2P variants, yet they are less worthwhile in the end. Many recently accepted 4P variants are rarely played in practice, compared to many of the most recently accepted 2P variants. 

Some background info that you might need about myself, and Variants.

The TL;DR is so brutal yet so accurate, I don't know what to say.

CGA Note: Indeed, it is.

I have an old account that I would rather not share with, as it contains my personal info, though it is about 2~3 years back from now. I also made variants, not for acception but just for my fun. Though this imchesspro0930 account was still used before the 'old' account.

At that time, Variants had more popularity than what it claims now, so 4PC seeks were actually practical, and resignations did not happen as often, making it easier to test and play 4PC variants, though nowadays, a game of ANY FFA Variant with >2 competant players is impossible with randoms, and when I want to play something like Sergeants Laboratory, I get the game starting sound when I completely forgot aboout the seek. If it is not something like Surprise Attack or Chaturdrez, both are awesome FFA variants, you can sleep 8 hours with a seek still ongoing.

Now, why does this matter? See, There has only been 9 NCV FFA submissions (not counting revisions, which makes the number go up to 11) in the past 6 months. The only one that got accepted in Sparks of Hope by @2bHNST. In contrast, there were a total of 120 NCV submissions at the same time period, and 6 2P Variants were accepted after Sparks of Hope, and none of Teams. 

The difficulty of making and testing 4P Variants, whether FFA or Teams is significantly harder than making 2P Variants for acception. in 4P, you have to test if teaming is encouraged, what happens if one player goes absent, what happens when not all players are competant, etc. None of which are needed to be tested in 2PC, even if queues could be filled up instantly. Teams, on the other hand has less that needs to be tested, but the initial difficulty increases as it introduced mechanics like tempo, which is more apparent in Teams. but are queues easy to fill up? No! You need to have 1 friend that is willing to test your variant, and even then it takes minutes. 

Let's say that you pulled a 2bHNST and got some FFA creations of yours accepted. Well, will it ever be played? No! I am very sporadic about my online schedule in the long term, but I never even saw a seek on some things like BlindGold, or Unison (apart from NoWellOkay's introduction to the variant), and those seeks rarely get into games. So, every part of making 4PC Variants has worse circumstances than making 2P Variants, as it is harder and less rewarding. 

Now you may ask, why is this a problem? You see, this is an ongoing problem, and I am partially responsible for it. Recent submission threads are filled with 2PC Variants, and the quality of 2PC Variants are much higher than 4PC respectively. This is slowly but surely unbalancing the number of 2PC Variants to 4PC Variants. When I mainly played variants with my old account, they had similar amounts in each category, but there is a surplus of 2P Variants nowadays, and some of them are really not that fun, or has better alternatives. This is fading away one of the biggest merits of Variants in chess.com, the >2 player customs! This trend is slowly making 4PC an extraneous feature as a whole, as very select people play most of these variants, and sometimes it's the creator whose making these seeks, making this server revolve around it's 2P Variants, further motivating creators to make 2P Variants.

How do we solve this? There are 3 big ways this may be solved, and those are by either increasing popularity of the Variants server as a whole, or cutting 2P Variants, essentially making a Merge event, but only on 2P Variants. The first one is some company stuff, and I would not try to talk in a field I have no knowledge about, although Variants as a whole is guaranteed to gain popularity if chess influencers decide to play it. The second is more viable and is something that can be done by our own hands, but the first option is more preferrable. The final one is to implement varying difficulties of bots you can play 4P Variants with, to resolve the main reason why people avoid playing 4P Variants, waiting time.

I wish a favorable solution to this will come soon in the future, as if this is not solved Variants will tilt in a way that is not favorable by anyone. One last thing, 4PC WoF's does not have a SINGLE game played in an arena rotation (Data taken from Ludo by @stupnik_2_0 ), which made >95% of WoF submissions 2P Variants, which I also bear responsibility with.

This is a good point. Kudos!

100% agree with this.

I’ve been playing on 4 Player Chess and Variants for over 6 years, which puts me right about when custom variant creation was first introduced to the original chess.con/4-player-chess server. 4P variant queues were definitely more common back then.

I think part of the shock factor that went into the sudden decline in 4P variant play was that there was so much changed during the 2022 merge and since then that it’s hard to pinpoint what the exact reason actually was. I’ve heard a few people say to just “undo” the merge but anybody who believes that would solve anything doesn’t know how programming works, imo.

On the topic of solutions, when you look at even rudimentary trend graphs, it’s pretty clear that any spike in the popularity of one chess variant on YouTube, Twitch, or Kick results in a spike in popularity of the entire server. I feel like this could be targeted in some way but as you said Chess.com is a company so I don’t know what that would look like (e.g., they can’t just pay @Hikaru to play a few games of Fog of War whenever).

A “purge” of variants (as I like to call it) is not something we have planned anytime in the future at the moment, although changes pertaining to individual variant popularity may be introduced alongside changes to how Golden Variant is structured. Definitely do not feel like CGAs are ignoring these issues, since we’re players too 🙂

I do not believe Golden Variant arenas have enough significance to boost the 4PC Gamemode as a whole.

Well, I will say a variated version of a quote: 'If chess.com wanted Hikaru to play Variants, Hikaru would play Variants.'

I would say it's the ignorance this community receives, and I certainly do miss the queuing speeds a few years prior.

As a newer member to variants, I find 4P games a lot harder to commit to, mostly because they take longer to play. In my current state, I usually don't have more than 15-20 minutes to play a single game, and a four player game at a 5 min time control will take, at most, 20 minutes. This is the biggest problem I see with 4P games, is that few people probably have the time to commit to longer games, and knowing that you will have to commit an additional 5 minutes to just waiting for the game to start, it can be very hard to actually commit to a game.

In my opinion, the main reason FFA variants have so little players is because 4 Player Chess has too many. You can find at least 80 people playing 4 Player Chess or Teams at almost any time of day, but you'd be lucky if there were even 7 people on the FFA and Extra variant lists combined, and don't even get started on the Teams and Giveaway variants, which have even less popularity.

In addition, not much has been done to popularize FFA variants. I mean, there is the Golden Arena, but even then, most players simply don't play the golden arena (I'm guilty of the too).

I also agree, as I had an account before this(now deleted) around 2-3 years ago where I used to play normal chess+variants, though I came right before the merge. You could see 4PC variants thriving.

Nowadays, the only variants you can see the queues filled up are chaturaji, normal 4PC, sometimes King Safety and War for Throne and very rarely Chaturdrez. Whereas you can see most 2PC variants getting players at certain times of day.

Another thing is that 2PC variants are more balanced, easier to play, and faster compared to 4PC variants, and therefore they would have more players.

So why do many players not play 4PC variants as a whole? Simple reason: there is sadly no reason to do so. Why would players play something that is not as developed and not as fun compared to standard chess? Sure, they could try to learn it, but it brings them no advantage. Who would say "I'm #1 in the world at a 4PC variant!" to a random person who plays chess? Nobody.

Exactly. If we want to save variants, we have to take action this year.

Another fix I'd like to mention that could work is a a way we can measure a players rating. For 4PC players, the first 3 games they play it won't effect their rating, and they would start with lower rated(1400/1500) players and play higher rated players as they win more games. Then after they play 3 games, it will show their rating. Kind of how when you make a new chess.com account.

The same for custom variants but with tweaks if needed.

make them play chess 960

JkCheeseChess wrote:Somehow, these strong chess players find more interest in memorizing 25 moves of Sicilian theory than playing ultrabullet 4pc

But I think this is justified; there are OTB tournaments where 25 moves of Sicillian theory helps, but not really any 4PC tournaments or variant tournaments. Its just more impressive to be good at chess then to be good at variants. At a strong level, variants simply aren't useful for you. As a decently strong player, I play variants for fun because I like fairy pieces and the mechanics, but if I was to ask one of my friends at my level to play and get into variants, they simply would say that its 'too complex'.

This goes especially for 4PC variants, as because there are not many players, it takes longer to get a game, which means that more people are discouraged from playing, which only makes the cycle worse.

and thiss is the only “official” variant

but it’s still less official than “proper” chess

It took me ten minutes to get three other players in a 4p variant before...

It took me 4 hours once

It took me 7 hours once.

And guess what?

-
THEY ABORTED.

I can feel ya. The pain.

4P variants are also much harder to learn than 2P variants. Most 2P variants can be learned in maybe a few hours max, but some 4P variants can take days or even weeks to learn, depending on their complexity level. This is because compared to 2P variants, 4P variants come with additional, more challenging factors, such as the emphasis on move order, unique board layout, and new game mechanics.

It also does not help that 4P games tend to take up more time than 2P games. If a new player wants to learn a new variant by playing a slower time control such as 10 min, but they only have a certain amount of time, they would likely be able to learn more about a 2P variant than a 4P variant. Typically, a 10 min game of a 2P variant tends to take much less time than a 10 min game of a 4P variant.

I agree with the topic.

...

the thing about 4p chess is that except for normal 4pc nobody else plays it

at least simplicity is kinda popular