There's something peculiar about games. Broken down to their most fundamental games are just an unnecessary series of obstacles. Presentation of information is

There's something peculiar about games. Broken down to their most fundamental games are just an unnecessary series of obstacles. Presentation of information is another component of games that can change things in ways that I think cannot really be assessed in a vacuum. So for instance consider crafting in Diablo 2 vs Diablo 3. In Diablo 2 crafting was ostensibly horrible. There was no clear way displayed of how to do it, or what the result might be, and actually putting things in your cube was tedious at best. Diablo 3 refined this. And suddenly all relevant information was immediately displayed, items would be automatically taken from your inventory and the entire system was substantially cleaned up. In a vacuum it's obvious which would be preferable. But somehow in game, the clean crafting system felt boring and tedious whereas the 'dated' crafting system, which really did feel like an anachronism, somehow managed to avoid this in ways that are really difficult to pin down. Those unnecessary obstacles often defy description yet are really what create the 'feel' of a game. Gameplay and presentation are both intrinsically tied together and I think trying to formulate a cookie cutter definition of good versus bad is something that's unlikely to be productive.