I've seen this before, and it smacks very much of sour grapes. What exactly makes it "better designed"? Is it simply that the goal posts for 2048 are set too

I've seen this before, and it smacks very much of sour grapes. What exactly makes it "better designed"? Is it simply that the goal posts for 2048 are set too low, and the goal posts for Threes is set too high? If you aim for 4096 or 8192 or 16384 (all achievable) in 2048, it's a much more difficult game that requires careful thought and planning. I enjoy Threes immensely, and find myself still replaying it (as I replay 2048), but I don't see an argument for it being objectively better. The fact that tiles only move by one allows you a lot more flexibility in repairing places where bad luck (or bad play) has landed you an out-of-order gap. But Threes has flaws; I think the biggest design flaw in Threes is that the incoming blocks are too varied -- the 1/2 is the central conceit of the game, but higher blocks (and especially the occasional super-large block) make the element of chance way too important. And even the 1/2 thing can get annoying -- when the board is half-full of reds with no blues showing up, what can you do? You're just stuck. At least 2048 is fairly consistent -- the presence of the occasional 4-block is a bit ugly, but otherwise the game has an element of predictability that puts the onus for progress squarely on the player rather than the random number generator, which mainly serves to make sure that each game is different.