Conditioning

An interesting thing we can keep in mind is the use of conditioning. Players are often trying to put a puzzle together when playing missions based on the cause-and-effect of their playthrough, and sometimes, if we can foresee this, we can condition the way they will play, succeed, or fail, your mission.

If players are often finding IEDs in trash bags, that is going to turn into the 'implicit language' of the mission: trash bags have IEDs! If enemy garrisons always have a campfire nearby, they are going to start associating that as a mechanic within the mission: enempy encampments all have campfires! Players will go through a 'lessons learned' experience contained within your mission.

This is generally a hit or miss, depending how explicit, how often and how long your mission is, not to mention how attentive players are being, but this is a subtle resource you can use to control your mission and guide players indirectly.