Bring chess to the gold saucer!
I'm pretty sure this has already been posted at some point but i've recently gotten into chess and I play it alot now. So I thought about the possibilty of implementing it into the Gold Saucer with a ranking system behind it kinda like Mahjong. Chess is a really old and popular game so i think alot of players would welcome this. It's also pretty simple to implement while at the same time probably attracting many players.
Ranking-System:
As Mahjong has a Ranking System chess should have too in form of ELO-Rating. For the ELO you would start at 800 and work from there. You gain points from winning and lose them by well.. losing. The more points your opponent has the more you gain if you win and less you lose if you lose. If you lose against an opponent who has significantly less points than you, you lose alot more if you don't win. The average point gain per win should be around 7-10 ELO.
If you queue the game should try to find an opponent roughly at your ELO rating. If queue times are long it should also find people outside your ELO-Range.
Rewards:
As of rewards they could for example add something similar to the FIDE titles in a FFXIV version for reaching a certain ELO-Rating in ranked chess, they could look something like this:
<Chess Grandmaster> for the best players surpassing the highest rating point barrier like 3000+
<Etheirys Master> (a pardon to "International Master" from the official FIDE titles) slightly behind GM like 2500+
<Chess Master> (instead of having FIDE Master and Candidate Master i'd just implement one general title which is the first obtainable title in ranked chess) for accessibility reasons one could attain it at already 1800+ or else 2000+
To make it more appealing to the broader audience you could add a casual mode which gives you MGP (more for winning, less for losing) and add some orchestrion rolls, glamour, chess minions etc. to buy for MGP in the gold saucer.
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That way, by having both the titles and collectibles which are accessible for everyone it would be a received very well i think for both people who just like playing it from time to time and people who want to achieve high ratings.
Additionally things like chess tournaments could be a thing or chess puzzles you can solve etc.
I hope this has some impact because personally i would really love to see some more board games in the gold saucer, especially ones which are more popular in the west because it's kinda sad to see mahjong being basically dead on western DC's.
Feel free to discuss this topic in this thread! :)