If an encounter goal is to obscure, or difficult to grasp they might try to circumvent it, be stuck or just fail at the encounter. Be crystal clear about the purpose, give feedback and descriptions to make these goal obvious.
Players might feel cheated if they don’t know all the options as you’re taking away their Player agency.
Reference
Let’s Design an Adventure: Encounters and the Three Pillars
Highlights or timestamps
Let’s Design an Adventure: Encounters and the Three Pillars Highlights
- With any alteration to the typical combat encounter flow, it is important to make sure the characters know, or have an easy way to learn, the ultimate goal of the encounter before it is too late. It’s unfair to punish the characters for failing at an encounter goal that they had no way of understanding was the goal.
— ^e66721 from Let’s Design an Adventure: Encounters and the Three Pillars Highlights