Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece

Re:Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece by bryanlarsen on Monday July 14, 2014 @10:22AM (#8031032)

If you're winning 15 times in a row, you're not moving fast enough. The appeal of 2048 is that you move so quickly, it feels cathartic. If you're not moving fast enough to make the occasional mistake, then of course you're going to get bored. If you're not making mistakes, you're also missing out on the fun of digging yourself out of a hole.

And as I mentioned in my original post, the goal for me to get 4096 or over 50,000 points. 2048 is easy, 50,000 points isn't.

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Re:Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece by Tyrannosaurs on Monday July 14, 2014 @10:29AM (#8031070)

But isn't that you having to add a level of challenge to the game that it doesn't have?

House ruling is fine but shouldn't that level of challenge (either through an enforced time limit or some other means) exist in the vanilla game?

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Re:Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece by bryanlarsen on Monday July 14, 2014 @10:38AM (#8031121)

2048 is a very accessible game, which is a large part of it's appeal. Rather than adding levels of difficulty, the better variants use achievements (like my 4096 and 50,000 goals, and your time limits) to keep it fun once you've got the basics mastered.

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Re:Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece by Tyrannosaurs on Monday July 14, 2014 @10:54AM (#8031185)

But the point is these aren't parts of 2048, they're just things you're putting on it.

It may be, in effect, a customisable game but that feels accidental rather than anything the designer intended. I could make any game harder by drinking heavily before playing it but that external factor making the game more difficult hasn't really improved it as a game.

Worth saying, I'm not wild about either game. For me they're simply not rewarding and I found myself resenting rather than enjoying the time I spent on them.

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Re:Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece by jaegerpicker on Monday July 14, 2014 @10:37AM (#8031115)

Honestly I still disagree, I can still easily hit 50,000 points multiple times in a row. The mechanic is broken, it's a literally solved game. Even moving extremely fast I rarely have a problem hitting 4096. Left down ldldldldrldldldldr nearly always works for an infinitely high score.

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Re:Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece by Kiro on Monday July 14, 2014 @10:56AM (#8031191)

I don't believe you.

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Re:Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece by jaegerpicker on Monday July 14, 2014 @11:34AM (#8031391)

shrug I don't have anything to prove here but read this: http://www.dailydot.com/gaming/2048-game-strategy-tips-cheat...

I just tried it out again and I used a slightly modified version of the technique laid out in this article (Left-Down-Left-Down until I couldn't anymore then switched to Right-Down, rinse repeat only occasionally switching directions to setup long number chains ) and I got a 4096.

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Re:Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece by Kiro on Monday July 14, 2014 @02:37PM (#8032452)

> It’s not guaranteed to yield an impressive score every single time, and it’s unlikely to produce any tiles higher than 512.

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Re:Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece by jaegerpicker on Monday July 14, 2014 @03:46PM (#8032797)

Yes, I've covered that point. No it's not just left down on repeat. It's trivially different though. In any case you can choose to believe or not but it's extremely easy compared to Threes! to the point of not being worth playing IMO.

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Re:Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece by omilu on Monday July 14, 2014 @01:07PM (#8031923)

You havn't figured out the strategy yet. 50,000 is routine once you have the strategy, and the joy in the game rapidly diminishes.

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Re:Design Is Why 2048 Sucks, and Threes Is a Masterpiece by moogleii on Monday July 14, 2014 @10:44AM (#8031142)

>The appeal of 2048 is that you move so quickly

For you maybe, not me - not all the time anyway. Granted when I am bored and feeling lazy, or I have a quick subway ride, I'll spin up 2048, but if I want a challenge and some thinking, I'll spin up Threes. In some sense, 2048 for me now serves as a less twitchy, less exciting Tetris substitute.

Moving the goal posts back on behalf of a game makes the goal more difficult, sure, but it doesn't necessarily mean the difficulty of the actual gameplay increases at the same rate, i.e. it can lag behind the difficulty of the goal, which in my opinion is very much the case for 2048.

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