I'm reminded of one of the developer commentaries on one of the Valve games, that designing games is as much about teaching as it is 'making fun'.
It's not just about setting up start and end points, a challenge between them, and informing the player of the mechanics involved at least once beforehand. For any teaching on a topic with a broad audience there will be different attitudes from the students and how much prompting is needed, they may be returning to it after a long break, you might be drawing from lessons a long time ago. Then most games try to put that in an immersive world without breaking the 4th wall more than they can help it and have the challenge fit and be plausible within it. Graphics and detail levels are constantly increasing, and may be variable depending on the user's system which can obscure/reveal any hints/prompts or deliberately hidden elements they needs to see to progress (and similar with other senses).
And after all that, the range of players need to hit a Goldilocks "just right" amount of resistance so it feels like a fair challenge to conquer, not be drawn out of the experience, and whatever extra goals are laid on top such as slowing pacing so story/lore/character conversations can play out.
It's not just about setting up start and end points, a challenge between them, and informing the player of the mechanics involved at least once beforehand. For any teaching on a topic with a broad audience there will be different attitudes from the students and how much prompting is needed, they may be returning to it after a long break, you might be drawing from lessons a long time ago. Then most games try to put that in an immersive world without breaking the 4th wall more than they can help it and have the challenge fit and be plausible within it. Graphics and detail levels are constantly increasing, and may be variable depending on the user's system which can obscure/reveal any hints/prompts or deliberately hidden elements they needs to see to progress (and similar with other senses).
And after all that, the range of players need to hit a Goldilocks "just right" amount of resistance so it feels like a fair challenge to conquer, not be drawn out of the experience, and whatever extra goals are laid on top such as slowing pacing so story/lore/character conversations can play out.