Consistency
These problems tend to fall in the "don't make the player feel stupid" category. Whenever you teach a player a new ability or rule, you have to be consistent about its use. Never make the player only use an ability one time in a game. At the same time, make sure if the ability isn't necessary often, that you make them use it frequently enough that they remember it's there. My least favorite puzzle in God of War was one where you have to push a box against a treadmill that has a giant spike wheel at the end. If you stop pushing the box, it will get eaten by the treadmill. Oh, and enemies attack you while you're doing this, which interrupts your box pushing. The part I had a problem with is that after I struggled through and finally got the box to the end and made it, I remembered that I had the ability to kick boxes a large distance at a time. I didn't remember this at the time because I never had to do that a single time after being taught I could do that. So the puzzle itself wasn't a problem, but the fact that I had forgotten about the ability was.
Another issue with consistency is if you do make the player do something a few times and then suddenly make them do that again in a completely different situation. For example, in Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, you were required to stop something rushing at you in its tracks (first goats, then boulders). Every time you did this, you were in your human form and it was made fairly obvious that the boulders had to be stopped the same way as the goats (when you were taught about this ability). The problem came at the very end of the game when I'm fighting Ganon. He comes barreling at me as a giant boar much like the goats and boulders. So I strap on my Iron Boots and repeatedly try to stop him, but it's just not working. After 30 minutes of this, I get frustrated and look up what to do. It turns out that somehow I'm supposed to know that my wolf form can ALSO do this stopping maneuver even though it doesn't have any hands to stop things with. It also is apparently stronger than me in my human form with Iron Boots on? Not once was I ever given any indication that my wolf form had the same abilities as my human form. Probably because except for that one case, they didn't ever have the same abilities.
In board games, I come upon this more when designing the board game or finding special cases that aren't defined in the rule book of a game. Whenever you find you have to make your own rule, the key is to figure out what is most consistent with the other rules of the game, the theme and spirit of the game, and doesn't give a ridiculously unfair advantage.
Ease of Access
Ideally, your game is either simple enough or well explained enough that players don't have to look up any information on how to play once they have learned the first time. However, this doesn't mean you should assume the player has figured out something the first time or that they will remember everything when they stop playing for a few months and come back to the game later. This is why players should always have easy access to information about how to play the game. In video games, this usually takes the form of Help menus or Move Lists. In board games, this just re-iterates the idea that the information in the rule book needs to be well separated and laid out. If the player needs to find out what to do when they die in a game, they should be able to find that information quickly and easily. There's nothing more boring/frustrating to other players than waiting on a player looking up something in the rule book. So make sure that when this does happen, the amount of time they spend looking is as little as possible.
Are there other common areas where lack of information or misinformation has ruined a game for you?
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