If they want to avoid ruining entertainment value, they should make a game that is not so easily solved by a computer program. They deliberately avoided mechanics that introduce complexity when designing Hearthstone.
I do not see why anyone other than Blizzard should be interested or required to cater to Blizzard's game design decisions.
No one is going to be "solving" Hearthstone using any of the analysis provided by the author here. The author is missing several huge pieces of the puzzle including card & deck synergy, synergy with hero power, option cards, meta-oriented target cards (aka tech cards), and most importantly, that cards themselves are a resource. You can immediately tell the latter isn't taken into account when you see cards like Shieldbearer, Voodoo Doctor, and Sacrificial Pact in the undervalued list (all low mana cards with little benefit). You won't find any of those cards in any legend-tier or professional deck at the moment because they provide very little utility or board presence. Nothing is shown in their research that provides any information that players don't already know.
He even mentions in the article that Blizzard is very supportive of their research on game and card balance, but they specifically mention that they are concerned about the real-time dashboard that can predict your opponent's deck. The prediction part probably especially puts them off considering there was a video released last week that shows someone allegedly using a network vulnerability to predict exactly what cards an opponent draws during a game.
I don't think that's necessarily true. Hearthstone is made by a well-known company, polished, and most importantly free. There's not much else to directly compare it to.
However, the massive popularity of stuff like DOTA suggests that there's plenty of appetite for games with deep, complex strategy.
There are ways to add computational complexity to a game without making it more difficult for new players to learn. Witness arimaa[0] compared to chess.
Someone who beats it with a computer program should not be negotiating with them for the release of the software. Especially with the nontrivial risk of lawsuit by a multi-billion dollar company hanging over his head.
*Edit - Just to be clear, there was no specific C&D made here. But I would definitely consider legal action a real threat when crossing Blizzard given how many times Blizzard has used legal tactics in the past. In additional to the aforementioned bnetd (which is a more defensible case), there was the implementation of the World of Warcraft clone in the Starcraft II engine that was shut down by legal action. That dude was a kid.
If Blizzard wants you to not do it, they will take legal action.
Play Path of Exile. It's a much better game than Diablo 3.
Whether or not Rares or Uniques are best in slot items is a matter of designers taste when it comes to Action RPGs. You can tune the item drop tables however you want. I would argue its nicer to have rares be BiS items, as its more fun when you see item diversity in the top builds. Seeing everyone walk around with the same Uniques is boring.
Diablo 3 fails because it does not provide enough ways to customize a character's build. There are a handful of stats that are important, and they mostly scale linearly. The skills are all unlocked, and you can change them at will.
If you do not have enough ways to customize your character, the item drop tables are moot. You can't drop items that are interesting if there are no interesting stats.
Path of Exile is the true successor to Diablo 2. The options for customization are endless, so every item that drops has the potential to be interesting. You should check that out if you are interested in ARPGs, especially something like Diablo 2. And if you are really interested in game analysis, their systems are really unmatched in today's game marketplace.
Diablo 3 is not a game in the Diablo genre. D3 is closer to something like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, or the X-Men Legends games.
Edit: I focused on the itemization part of your post, but I totally missed the map part of your post.
I'm not sure map randomness was relevant at all in Diablo 2. That game was pretty much all Meph runs, and then Baal runs. The maps didn't really matter, you just teleported to the boss and hoped for good drops.
I've played Path of Exile a little, but while I'm don't usually care much about graphics in game, the style in PoE was an incredible turnoff for me. It's a real shame, because the game design indeed has some very interesting ideas, and I would've loved to explore them in more depth.
I agree with your point on maps. Diablo 2's focus on bosses over general farming was one of its weak points. The map structure would've been more important if Blizzard had made boss runs and general farming rewarding in distinct ways.
There are other things that I feel Diablo 3 did wrong, but my comment was getting dangerously long as it was: lack of build permanence (you touched on this), non-existent social features (slightly improved in the expansion), uninspired items (less so since the expansion) and badly tuned reward structure (I appear to be alone in feeling the expansion has not improved this aspect).
This is such a killer point and neatly sums it up.
This is also why I think basic income would be so great for a startup CEO. If there is a sensible government system for guaranteeing my survival, I can put all the business revenue back into the business. I'll grow more quickly.
It's pretty reasonable to expect a store would think of tracking a customer's path through the store. Websites do that all the time.
In addition, if we find a good way to provide information to the store owner about how his or her store is being browsed and used, it is likely that stores will provide better shopping experiences.
Not my downvote, but I suspect people don't like the slippery slope argument ("tracking is omnipresent on the web, therefore it's OK to do it in the real world as well").
Then there's "better shopping experiences" which most people's BS translators will read as "worse shopping experiences / persuading people to spend more than they intended".
To be clear, I'm not arguing that it is justified or moral. Whatever you think about 'right' or 'wrong', you have to realize that a person who builds a store is going to want to know everything about how his or her store is used. EVERYTHING. That's not good or evil, that's just logical.
Acting like it should be self evident to a store owner that tracking users is inherently wrong is just ignoring the viewpoint of the store owner wholesale. Does not lead to good policy.
I think what's really great about our system is that (at least for the privileged who can work in startups) its really easy to put your money where your mouth is.
If you are a skilled employee that is responsible for the bulk of a company's scaling, it's easier than ever for you to guarantee enough stock in the company to guarantee your efforts are worthwhile.
If your company isn't compensating you accordingly, you can found your own. If it's true that founders aren't that much more valuable than employees, then you should do ok, right?
Visual design is important in games. Novel game mechanics are important in games.
In this case, I think the mechanics were the difficult thing to create. And the mechanics took months to refine.
Looking at the history of Threes -> 1024 -> 2048, I think the business incentive for copying and polishing existing game designs is clearly superior to the business incentive for designing a novel mechanic. Why make a novel mechanic when someone can just copy it? That strategy is too risky.
I think the story of these games is a microcosm for the game industry as a whole. More game sequels are released than original game ideas. And I think that has to do with the incentives we create for game developers.
I think the creator of 2048 has priced his value about right. He knows what he brought to the table, but he thinks his contribution is not the lion's share of what made 2048 special. At the same time, he does not really know how to create a system that values innovative games more highly. And all the while, an opportunity to make a lot of money is whizzing by his head.
One, as original as Threes is it's unfortunately super easy to clone. 2048 being made in a weekend being proof. Yes I know it's not an exact clone. Let's say then it was very easy to make a similar game.
There are plenty of popular games that aren't easy to clone quickly. So I'd argue the lesson there is consider making something hard to clone.
Also, he open sourced the game. That effective says "please clone this". The license effectively implies "feel free to copy this to phonegap and publish it". Which once it was popular people did.
Do you think ease of cloning is the correct metric to optimize?
Put another way, if a game developer thinks this: "This would be a really fun game! But it would be too easy to clone, so I guess I will not make it. I'll do something else." Is that a thought process that you would support?
I think it's reality. Do I like it? I'm mixed on it.
I'm sad that Threes didn't seem to get the attention that it kind of seemed like it deserved. On the other hand I think even if Threes is arguably a better game by some metric most people seem to enjoy 2048 more so 2048 brought something to the table that wasn't there before.
If you think your game is easy to clone, rather than not make it, maybe you should take that into account when releasing it. Maybe Threes should have been free? Maybe knowing it would be easy to remake they should have invested more in getting the word out? Or, maybe as you suggest they should have done something else.
Basically I think it's reality. An easy to clone game has some risks that a non-easy to clone game doesn't. You should take those risks into consideration.
I do not see why anyone other than Blizzard should be interested or required to cater to Blizzard's game design decisions.