One thing I’m personally very fond of in IF are plausible puzzles – puzzles which can be solved by reasoning, rather than by blindly manipulating each and everything.
As a counter example: In one Doctor Who adventure, you found your faithful robot companion K-9 in a workshop inside your TARDIS spaceship. Yet, K-9 was inactive due to a missing battery pack. Where was the pack finally to be found? – Nowhere inside the workshop, not even in the TARDIS, but in a letterbox somewhere outside on the planet on which you just landed (!), with no indication how it got there (!!).
Things like that are a major letdown for me. I’d like to play a game which I can win by being clever and thoughtful, not by preparing for each eventuality by dragging around every item I find lying around, however useless it would be in the real world, and by examining and reexamining whatever I come across.
True to the wording of “interactive fiction”, it shouldn’t be necessary for my player character to do things which are “out of character” for him, which wouldn’t occur to him in a true life situation, to win the game.
That link makes me feel really smug, because I put [what some reviewers on IFDB, at least, considered] a maze in my game and it did win the Best Puzzle XYZZY. [dusts hands off, puffs chest out]
I like when I type a command that doesn’t have to work, and it does.
I like when a game shows me something cool; I love when a game lets me do something cool.
I like having a clear idea what I should be doing, even if I haven’t figured out how to do it.
I like characters with personality.
I like when metagame functions are included in the game’s fiction.
I like having tedium anticipated and eliminated for me.
I like when the first syntax I try is accepted.
I like a tight, streamlined experience.
I like making lists of things I like.
I don’t like being asked what I want to unlock the door with.
I like story openings that tell me who I am, what I’m doing, and why. Basic Writer 101 stuff, pretty much.
I like writing that tempts me with some interesting directions I could steer the story. Tempt. Mere “offer” is too clinical.
I don’t like puzzles for the sake of puzzles. Wordplay puzzles in particular blow me out of the water.
I like dialogue, particularly dialogue in which I can also “give” answers, stories, or encouragement to NPCs rather than just take, take, taking information from them like they’re computer terminals.
I like having a known set of tools, whose uses I can string together in interesting ways, for the benefit (or righteous one-upmanship) of the characters around me.
I don’t like being a character who’s stupid, talked down to, or constantly brushed off. “You” is a surprisingly powerful pronoun.