Is it possible to disable the game chat?

[Gnugly]

I'm just here to play games thank you.

So you just want everyone to act as if they are bots just here for you to play against at your convenience? It's OK if you want to treat human beings that way, but that's what it sounds like.

No, it is the dominant negative behavior on the internet that makes it unappealing to chat, I've been on other communities which were more friendly, and others which were worse (e.g. online chess).

If you've spent serious time playing chess on the internet you'd know that it makes way more sense to turn the chat off, therefore there is a certain threshold where it makes sense to turn the chat off, the real question here is whether BGA's "average" chat has passed that threshold or not. That differs from one person to another depending on their tolerance.

[richyfourtytwo]

Maybe it's because I play turn-based, but what I see is 50% not even replying to 'hello' (I can live with that, np), 45% neutral and 5% very positive. Never seen anything toxic, despite me having made 2 very dumb mistakes in The Crew recently.

[Gnugly]

I guess it is not that bad, and the few "very positive" experiences could be worth it... Might be more healthy overall to just train oneself to ignore the negative stuff.

[Meeplelowda]

I guess it is not that bad, and the few "very positive" experiences could be worth it... Might be more healthy overall to just train oneself to ignore the negative stuff.

With over 6,000 games played, I've only reported a player's chat once.

[Shaq Jenkins]

LOL, it is really sad to see how anti-social BGA has become.

Years ago, I made an IRL friend from BGA, which I never would have had chat been disabled.

It's sad that people nowadays (not just BGA but the world in general) want to avoid human interaction. That "I'm just here to play games thanks" attitude is also partly why this site isn't as much fun as it used to be.

[Meeplelowda]

LOL, it is really sad to see how anti-social BGA has become.

Years ago, I made an IRL friend from BGA, which I never would have had chat been disabled.

It's sad that people nowadays (not just BGA but the world in general) want to avoid human interaction. That "I'm just here to play games thanks" attitude is also partly why this site isn't as much fun as it used to be.

Similarly, I've "met" someone who lives in another country and we have sometimes set our real time games to turn-based so that we can chat without time pressure.

[Tof63]

I'm not a fan of blocking all conversations, but if you want to block a particular user because they're unpleasant, then maybe you can use this: https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/ChromeExtension

[Archisian]

I wish we had this for those who want the option of disabling it. Some people just want to play a game and not want to have a discussion. There is nothing wrong with that. So it’s strange to me when someone thinks that those who just want to play and not chat are in the wrong.

[GTSchemer]

I wish we had this for those who want the option of disabling it. Some people just want to play a game and not want to have a discussion. There is nothing wrong with that. So it’s strange to me when someone thinks that those who just want to play and not chat are in the wrong.

If you were able to turn off chat, would you at least consider using the "Are you still there" auto-translated message to check if someone has had a glitch, where it doesn't appear to be their turn but actually is, before kicking them out?

The people silently and facelessly kicking people without even attempting to check if everything is working properly are the ones that bother me. I don't mind people not wanting to chat of course.

If someone wanted to just play AI, there are platforms for that.

[Cile]

I wish we had this for those who want the option of disabling it. Some people just want to play a game and not want to have a discussion. There is nothing wrong with that. So it’s strange to me when someone thinks that those who just want to play and not chat are in the wrong.

If you were able to turn off chat, would you at least consider using the "Are you still there" auto-translated message to check if someone has had a glitch, where it doesn't appear to be their turn but actually is, before kicking them out?

The people silently and facelessly kicking people without even attempting to check if everything is working properly are the ones that bother me. I don't mind people not wanting to chat of course.

If someone wanted to just play AI, there are platforms for that.

Oh, there are platforms where I can play Feast For Odin against an AI? Age of Innovation? Hanabi? And all of these are free like BGA?

Hanabi is an excellent example of a game that would benefit from being able to disable chat entirely, as I've heard that community can be pretty toxic and you're not supposed to be able to openly communicate anyway.

I don't know about the games and modes you play, but the games I'm in most of the time players don't use the chat at all. If they had the option to disable it entirely there wouldn't even be a difference.