Day 58: FotLC through the 113 lenses from The Art of Game Design

Day 58 - Lens 96: The Lens of Essential Experience ( or Lens 2 in the 2dn edition )
To use this lens, stop thinking about your game, and start thinking about the experience of the player. Ask yourself these questions:

What experience do I want the player to have?
Exciting, intense, social, subversively meaningful experience.

What is essential to the experience?
Constant action.
Meaningful decisions under reasonable pressure.
Plentiful ways to interact with other players.
Having a place to reflect on your actions in the game and what they mean.

How can my game capture that essence?
Real time play. Challenges. Clear stakes. Framing narrative.

I think that the clear stakes is the takeaway here. Some decisions are meaningful, but it doesn't matter if the players don't understand the meaning. They will come to understand over repeated play and the game is faster than other territory control games... but I keep feeling like I can do more to make the first playthrough clearer and the stakes of the players actions more transparent.