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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
The verse starts:
"Black cat is bad luck, bad guys wear black.
Musta been a white guy who started all that."
Interestingly, the MC in question here is white-skinned. I think he's Jewish, but I might be wrong.
From the perspective of an African immigrant, I would imagine that it is easy to see discrimination everywhere. I think your friend is annoyed that the idea of "blackness being inferior" is omnipresent (from his perspective). It's even built in to the very way we speak.
I think that what your immigrant friend really wants is just to feel like he has the same shot a person with white skin does. He's kvetching about words because racism is on his mind a lot, but he's not expecting you or anyone to rewrite the English language. He probably just gets treated poorly on a regular basis because of his race, and he wants that to stop.
You (We) could likely cure his annoyances while stopping short of major linguistic changes.
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.