WordTwist Survey - What Feature Would You Most Enjoy?

[admin]

Hi everyone -

I'm posting a quick survey here to get a feel for which features our members are most interested in seeing implemented here over the next several months. All registered users can vote once. And if you have any ideas that aren't listed here, feel free to post in this thread and make the request.

Options are:

Challenge a Friend - upon completing a game, you may send a "Challenge" to any other registered player. They will receive a private message with a personal message from you as well as your score and stats for this board, as well as a unique url that will allow them to play the very same board you just played. When they've finished playing their stats will be compared to your stats, and a winner will be declared between the two of you. Game stats (wins/losses) from "Challenge a Friend" will be tracked separately, and points accrued will not count toward the all-time and monthly competitions.

Real Time WordTwist - players can join real-time WordTwist games which follow the same rules and regulations of the current games. The only difference is that players will be competing at the same time, on the same board, and stats at the end of the game will be displayed for everyone playing. Points accrued will not count toward the all-time and monthly competitions.

Flash-based WordTwist - a flash version of WordTwist will work much in the same way that the current games work, but will require users to have the Flash plugin on their browsers. Benefits would be better timer management (for those who have occasional problems with their timers stopping in mid-game) as well as a faster, "mouse-dragging" option that will allow users to use their mouse to submit words without having to click on each individual letter. Players would also be able to rotate the board.

Community WordTwist - a more community-oriented game of WordTwist. A new game will begin every hour, and players are welcome to jump in and out of the game and play for as long as they want without worrying about time-constraints. There will be a chat-room as well so folks can play and chat at the same time. At the end of every hour scores will be tallied and displayed. Points accrued will not count toward the all-time and monthly competitions.

Interactive Buddylists - players would be able to add other registered players to their "Buddy List." Any time someone from your list logs onto the site at the same time as you, you will see a notice to that effect so that you can meet up in the chat room and chat in real time.

Cheers, and thanks for playing!

- Stephen

[mandc]

We play as a pair and would be interested in comparing our stats with other pairs.
Perhaps there could be a friendly "table" for just pairs?

[marybee]

How about being able to rotate the board? :)

[admin]

Hi mandc - could you let me know a bit more about how you see this working? I'm not sure I understand how you play as a pair... is it two people with two separate accounts, or two people using the same account at different times?

Hi marybee - I forgot to mention, rotating the board is going to be part of the "Flash-based WordTwist" option. I've added it there now. :-)

[jeanierap]

I would LOVE to see the rotate the board option too. Competing and chatting with other players is great. Thanks for the chance to give the opinion.

[yahto]

I agree. I wish I could rotate the board to see more options.

[skyman]

Accurate math: As it now stands, one's average score never reflects actual points divided by number of games.
Why? Is division so difficult?
But other than that, enjoy it immensely.

[Jolty]

Thanks for creating such an enjoyable game. My only real complaint is that one of the best ways to rank performance is not currently available: percent of total points found and/or percent of total words found.

Currently, it's possible to game the system by only playing games that have the highest potential point values, thus insuring a relatively high average score. Percentages will help even the playing field.

Hope that makes sense.

[WhiteHawk]

Addictive game.

Is there a reason why one's score never appears if the "alternate timing method" is used? Tks.

[beth61]

If you're willing to track more stats, you could track unique words (the ones that show up in green).

[torriblezone]

I voted Community, but would like Real Time just as well. Thanks for asking, and thanks for a fab game.

[jillhasskills]

I agree with Beth, it would be fun to count green words, say after the puzzle has been played over 50 times. I know when someone has played the puzzle over a 100 times, and I still find words, I get a real thrill, because this community is awesome, and hard to beat!

[chiman]

Re playing as pairs; "M" types as "C" calls out the words ( it gives me more time to look for words) .None of us touch types.
I think there are some others playing as pairs,(kateandpaul. danc.) and if enough are interested have a table to compare averages, best words etc.
Hope this helps.

[mamalu]

You know the old saying, "It's not a bug; it's a feature!" Well the feature I'd like most would be to have the Enter key work all the time. Sometimes it works and sometimes I need to click in the box and then click on Submit. That means I might have a whole string of words already in the box before I realize none of them have taken. I'm sure I've missed some of them retyping, and I've sure missed on time.

I love the suggestions above, especially about rotating the board, but I wouldn't want to have to do it in flash mode.

This is one of my all-time favorite games (whatever you call it!) and I really enjoy this site. It has been very addictive... Thanks for all your hard work.

[angelinaxox]

I like the idea of being able to play against others and chat at the same time. Will there be different rooms and how many will be able to play against each other in a room? Will you be able to see who is in a room before joining it? Also, I'm glad you are adding the rotate the board feature in the flash games. I like that feature.

[tim]

i love the format and the scoring, very addictive game.

you know when you play in boggle person and you say 'since you got x you really should have gotten 'x's'?

i think that would be a great feature. does anyone else want this?

one simple way of thinking about it would be to highlight words that are variants of words that you got, like plurals and other suffixes and then add one letter off items.

a pretty simple variant would be to color code the result words by their status as common, wide, rare, ultra rare

A little more complex way to do this would be to stack rank my words as a player. show me the unique words i have but rank them into popular words, and rare words. then highlight my popular words in the result so i can weed out 'zsurhta' from 'eats' as words that i should have gotten.

if you keep track of total unique words it could be a cool stat to know how many words you've found and maybe even incentive to look up what a few of the odd ones really mean.

so to that, you could randomly show the definition of one of the words that i found in the game board on the results page. a little free education.

[hotflashmom]

I'm a scrabble player in California and enjoy playing wordtwist. However, I am getting confused with words which are valid in SOWPODS but are invalid in TWL. Can we have two or more different dictionary bases to choose from?

[NotSteppen]

I'd like the "Word possibilities grid" (count of the number of words broken down by size and difficulty) that you see prior to a game to also show up on the results page as a reminder of what would have been possible.

[MadSlantedPowers]

Accurate math: As it now stands, one's average score never reflects actual points divided by number of games.
Why? Is division so difficult?
But other than that, enjoy it immensely.
I just checked that out and you are right. The average appears to be correct for the current month, but is a couple points short on the lifetime stats.

[dsweetie]

Re playing as pairs; "M" types as "C" calls out the words ( it gives me more time to look for words) .None of us touch types.
I think there are some others playing as pairs,(kateandpaul. danc.) and if enough are interested have a table to compare averages, best words etc.
Hope this helps.

I think that idea is awesome

[pbvball]

I would LOVE to see the rotate the board option too. Competing and chatting with other players is great. Thanks for the chance to give the opinion.

yes, this is an issue form me too

[pa-lee]

I'm an editor, a word lover, and a compulsive reader, so WordTwist really has me hooked. I'm totally addicted to WordTwist (thanks alot :) ), but I am NOT thrilled with the time limits.

I've just started playing as a registered member after practicing as a "guest" for quite awhile.

I have read the posts going back to 2007, and EVERYONE's been asking for a non-competitive option! I would love to play at leisure. Can't we PLEASE have a non-competitive, time-free option? Or a choice of five or ten minute games?

That would be the one feature that would entice me into becoming a Premium member.