I've been feeling slightly discouraged after playing Threes on short sessions for a week. The problem is not that I only get to the 192 card on most runs, but that when I do manage to get to higher points I am not even aware of what I actually did better. I apply the exact same ideas and care and end up with weirdly varying results. I looked up on the interwebs to see if I'm missing some sort of strategy and I seem to have come upon the same strategies that everyone else does.

I honestly don't care about the difficulty in a game if I feel actual feedback from my decisions and technique, much like how Patrick feels about Spelunky and Dark Souls, for instance. However once a mechanic starts to depend too much on luck I lose interest.

So the question is, does anyone else feel this? Is the game really like this or am I missing something? I do like it and would love keep on liking it.

You're right. The problem comes from the randomness of the locations of new blocks. You could be playing super strategically, and then a new block pops in in the exact wrong place and you're just fucked from there. It's a great game, but eventually I feel like all of my games become mindless swiping after trying to play strategically in the beginning.

I think that is just what the game is. It's like a lot of games, Solitaire jumped to mind initially. You can know the rules and mechanics but you are not going to win every time. Though, with something like Threes the idea of winning is more broad. Just a higher score really. But that is what makes it fun. Can you out smart the luck factor? Can you attempt to arrange your board to be prepared for the game to give you three 2's in a row when you have no 1's?

I've actually gotten good at predicting where the next block is going to come (usually in a space you have just opened and also where it can fuck you up the most) and, while it helped, it hasn't been making that much of a difference overall.

I guess I could prepare the board to receive three 2's, but then it wouldn't be prepared to receive some other variation of the game trying to mess you up. If the system indeed allows a more skilled player than me to be prepared to deal with the full plethora of randomness, then that would keep me motivated to keep playing and be better at it. If even someone that has played many many hours still gets fucked (and eventually rewarded) by randomness, then it's not a concept I personally can appreciate anymore.

When I play Threes, it's generally with a total absent mindedness, so I don't do particularly well, and it's pure luck when I do. Today I was playing and I thought to myself "why is 24 my highest card? I had 96 a minute ago" then I realised that I must have failed and didn't even notice, I just kept on playing assuming it was the same game.