Your most loved and most hated feature in any text-based game

[Sinzygy]

What are some of your
- most loved (oh yeah! I wanna do the same in my game)
- most hated (oh no, never! neveeeer!!)
feaures you have come across in any text-based games? (preferrably browsergames with a link )

[beam]

I don't have any favorite general features, but Tri-Sphere's smithing system was great. Rather than adding a weapon shop, they made it so that you had to make your own weapons with the ores you find.

My least favorite feature in a game is definitely referral/donation systems that put players at an advantage over other players.

[Broda]

My least favorite feature in a game is definitely referral/donation systems that put players at an advantage over other players.

I like how cypher handled this: You buy turns and everyone gets them not just you.

I was thinking of putting in a Donator system and I'm currently weighing how I'm going to do it as, at the moment, my game is not going to be turn-based.

[Sinzygy]

I like how cypher handled this: You buy turns and everyone gets them not just you.

And if no one buys any turns, the game won't run at all? Woha, that is one hell of a sweet idea to get at least some of the money back you invested in a game.

@beam: Yeah, in the end the players who invest the most money will be on top. There are some games (german one, tho) which have premium-accounts, but they only add very slight advantages and mostly offer additional tools to manage you account more efficient

[Broda]

I like how cypher handled this: You buy turns and everyone gets them not just you.

And if no one buys any turns, the game won't run at all? Woha, that is one hell of a sweet idea to get at least some of the money back you invested in a game.

No, everyone gets 2 turns/10 minutes

[Sinzygy]

so, you get 2 turns every 10 minutes + the turns any random player bought? Or is it only a fraction of these turns? It's still a nice idea, tho.

[Broda]

so, you get 2 turns every 10 minutes + the turns any random player bought? Or is it only a fraction of these turns? It's still a nice idea, tho.

You get 2 turns every 10 minutes up to a limit of 5000 and then the turns anyone bought (which could go over the limit). The limit gave an incentive for being active as you would stop accruing the 2 turns/10 minutes if you were over the limit.

[Zeggy]

My favourite feature in any game is the ability to go your own way and have the freedom to choose what you want to do/specialise in. So, you're not stuck with doing the same thing every round, but you could become specialised in one area, then the next round you can try something else. That way you won't get too bored

I can't think of a feature I don't like atm, I'll get back to you with that when I've thought of something.

This is a little off-topic, but I'm replying to the problem of having a premium account, or donations. Instead of getting extra stats/resources/etc, you could give them cosmetic advantages instead. Such as fast-loading, no-ad pages, custom colour schemes and templates, special member ranks, etc.

[beam]

Yeah, that's a much better reward for being a premium user. If I were to ever implement something like that, that's definitely the way I'd do it.