One of the most dangerous and yet often-used phrases to say to anyone when it comes to pretty much any media is to claim that someone just doesn’t get it. That’s because sometimes it’s very right, and sometimes it’s very wrong, and if it’s the latter, you look like an utter fool.
I’m going to start off with a few factual statements. Warframe has a serious problem with onboarding new players. Final Fantasy XIV puts up pretty serious barriers to new players with a lengthy story to clear before catching up to current content. The Secret World had unpleasant combat. City of Heroes does not have great graphics, especially for player models. And I assure you that if I put those slightly higher, people would be leaping in to rush for the comments to explain how the problem is that I just don’t “get it” for any of the above.
But I do get it. I get every single one. And herein we see the problem. “Getting it” doesn’t change the problem.
We don’t have time to go into the etymology of the phrase “getting it,” but it’s pretty familiar. If someone doesn’t get it, he doesn’t understand something, but it usually goes much deeper than that. It’s like someone complaining that it’s hard to unscrew the top of a shampoo bottle for every shower and not realizing that it’s just a flip-open cap. That complaint is someone who didn’t get it and probably walks away feeling more than a little sheepish.
More often when it’s applied to media, someone who doesn’t get it is someone who missed something important either through lack of attention, lack of comprehension, or both. “Wait, why isn’t Luke going with Leia and Han?” is the question of someone who did not get it when the film established very clearly that Luke had a vision and needs to go find Yoda. If that viewer complains it’s nonsensical, well… you didn’t get it.
What becomes problematic is that sometimes, people assume that someone didn’t get something when the problem is that the thing in question was… y’know… not gettable. The problem is with the material itself, not the audience.
You can argue, for example, that if I’m saying FFXIV has a whole bunch of story that players need to get through, I just don’t understand how the game is a story-based experience and it doesn’t let me skip ahead to miss vital context and roulettes ensure I can still find groups for old content. But I do get that. I get all of that. It’s not actually all that complicated to get. That doesn’t change the fact that it is genuinely a problem for newer players or even returning players. If you clocked out midway through Shadowbringers and you’re excited for Dawntrail, you have a whole mess of story before you can play the thing you want!
The fact that it’s good story I like? Not actually relevant here. It is still a problem. I can understand why the problem exists and maybe even not have a solution for the problem while being honest that it is a problem.
The thing is that the “you just don’t get it” crowd tends to substitute what they like for what is more generally true. TSW‘s content is something of a dark legend. Very, very few people would point to the game’s combat as a bright point, although it was hardly the only problem (I wrote a column about that). Does that mean no one liked it? Of course not. Some people did like it. But people who didn’t like it weren’t all too stupid to get it; it was just actually not good.
Why is it problematic? Because instead of addressing the problem, it tries to logic it away. If I try to insist that Warframe doesn’t make it almost impossible for new players to get into it, you just don’t get the game, what I am doing is ensuring that you are not going to keep trying to play the game. Why would you? At best I’m implying that if you were smarter, you would understand it perfectly, and that’s the best-case scenario.
But engaging with it honestly at least lets you try to fix some of the problem. If you try to give people an understanding of what makes the game fun later on, how to make goals and start progressing toward them, and so forth… some people are still going to bounce off because the onboarding is real bad, folks. It’s so bad. But that’s going to happen as well if you wave it off! At least this way you have a nonzero chance of improving things!
And being honest about these things lets you focus your own energy on the things that the game in question does well but might genuinely be hard to get. Yes, CoH has dated graphics and player characters do not look great. Yes, Enhancements aren’t very well explained. But the system around them is… actually good? Once you explain how sets work, it’s a lot of fun to make builds that work!
You might now be wondering this: If there are things people genuinely don’t get, how do you tell the difference? Where’s the line between “you just don’t get it” and “you get it, this sucks, here’s how to work around that” so that you can always know the answer?
Sorry, there isn’t one. There is no firm hard-and-fast line. Heck, sometimes the line changes. It was not a valid complaint to say that FFXIV had too much story if, say, you joined for patch 2.1 and didn’t want to go through the story. It is definitely true now. And it would be entirely valid to say that you don’t like the story, but if your reason for saying you don’t like the story is that the game’s story consists of nonstop scenes of elaborate ballroom dances where the game stops dead to explain everyone’s outfit? I’m sorry, that’s not a thing, and you missed something important along the way.
Every single video game – every one of them – has problems. Some of them are clear from the moment you turn on the game. Some of them are problems at launch but get fixed. Some of them aren’t problems at launch but get introduced over time as the game gets more complicated. And some of them, yes, are problems that fans have already gotten over but are still there and real.
No matter what your favorite MMO might be – whether it’s one I’ve listed or something else entirely – if you’re a fan of the game, you need to understand what those problems actually are. Someone who doesn’t want to join up in Warframe because of grinds or struggles with onboarding is pointing out real problems. And telling that someone “you just don’t get it” indicates that you don’t get it. You don’t understand that this is an issue that doesn’t have to be there that is turning people off. Whether or not it is easy to fix or even possible is another discussion, but it won’t go away by pretending it doesn’t exist.
Sometimes you know exactly what’s going on with the MMO genre, and sometimes all you have are Vague Patch Notes informing you that something, somewhere, has probably been changed. Senior Reporter Eliot Lefebvre enjoys analyzing these sorts of notes and also vague elements of the genre as a whole. The potency of this analysis may be adjusted under certain circumstances.
