Well, there are Text Only based games and Text based games with a few visuals... I've tried and played both in my life time, regardless if it's this industry or not... In either case, text only or not, the same failings sometimes occur... If the content is too grindy or repetitive then I get annoyed even faster then I might in a more traditional Visual Novel... The story telling and description elements, I believe, are far more important in a text based game... The quality of the story telling, the descriptions of characters and events, story/plot pacing, etc. becomes more important then any used visuals... Because a majority of the player/readers imagination relies on the text based elements... If the player/reader isn't enjoying what they are reading, and don't feel somewhat immersed in what is being told, then it will eventually fail as a product...
If you include a few visuals, as I've seen in a couple text based games, it's not as important on visual quality as long as the text based descriptions make up for the lower quality visuals... Many of the times I find that the visuals in text based games are more about the user interface and less about representing the characters and events...
You will always have a majority of gamers who are all about the visuals, and that is mostly because, either they don't read much anyways, or that is how they were brought up... In a world filled with high-resolution visuals and AAA graphics based games... For me, I'm older, and I've been around before the advent of all these visuals... I played lots of games with either very little graphics in them, or none at all... I remember playing Zork style games (not my favorite style of text based games because navigation is a major pain), and later I got into ANSI based graphics games... And as the industry changed, so did the higher use of visuals... Another issue you will run into with Text based games is that, initially, some of the players/readers coming to this market are just looking for a means to an end... They just want to masturbate and move on... Reading text requires a time investment, some players don't desire to invest... There is also an issue with language barriers, and people who don't read well... The list goes on...
I've played a few text based games in this genre over the last few years... Some I felt were boring, some had poor story pacing with pointless text that didn't push the narrative along properly, and some I really enjoyed... If I had to list some things I prefer in a text based game... Well told and fun story telling is key, decent character personalities is another, stay away from stereotypes if possible, be as descriptive as you can without going overboard, and so on... Pretty much think of all the qualities people seek out of Novels and Books, and that is what you should strive for, if it is mainly story based... Game play mechanics can have a great influence on how any story elements are used as well... If story is not the main function of the game, then at least pay close attention to descriptions, good spelling/grammar, and fun game play...
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