Messages, chat and ignoring players

Messages in Goodgame Big Farm work like private mail between players, and on top of that there is a broadcast message for the whole Cooperative and a group chat with its own settings. A player who pesters you with unwanted messages can simply be silenced through the ignored players list. I describe how writing and filtering messages works, what the cooperative chat is good for, and how to set up ignoring and cancel it again.

The message and chat system is simple, but it covers everything you need for talking to your cooperative and to everyone else - the broadcast cooperative message and the separate channel for the leadership come in handy in any more active cooperative, and ignoring is enough to deal with annoying players without having to report anything.

Messages between players work like private mail

Messages work like ordinary private mail between players. I click on another player, open the message window and write my text - the game warns me if I forget to write the message itself or leave the subject empty, in which case the message goes out with the note “No subject”. You can't send a message to yourself, the game refuses it right away.

Swear words can't go into the text or the subject - the filter won't send a message with a vulgarity in the subject at all and tells you straight away which word is the problem. You also can't write to a player whose level is still too low; in that case the game says the player can't receive messages yet - this typically applies to complete beginners, and it's there to protect them from spam.

Before I write to someone, I click their name in the message window to bring up detailed player information - it's handy to find out who I'm actually talking to before I send a question or an offer.

A cooperative message reaches all members at once

As a member of a Cooperative I also have the option of writing a broadcast cooperative message that goes straight to every member. I mainly use it for organizational things - a heads-up about an event, a request for more activity, information from the leadership. These messages are stored separately in the mailbox under the cooperative messages tab, so they don't get lost among ordinary correspondence from individual players.

Besides messages from players and from the cooperative, the mailbox also receives system messages and occasionally a message from the community manager addressed to all players at once.

The mailbox can be filtered by message type

The longer I play, the fuller the mailbox gets, and without a filter there would be no finding anything in it. That's why the game lets you filter messages into messages from players, cooperative messages and system messages, and separately into sent and received messages. Messages can also be selected in the list, which comes in handy when I want to delete several of them at once.

The show all messages button resets the filter back to the complete overview - I use it whenever I'm not sure where a message has wandered off to.

Ignoring silences a player who pesters me with messages

When a player keeps sending me unwanted messages, I don't have to deal with it any other way than by ignoring them - I just add them to the ignored players list. There are two ways to do it, either directly in the player rankings, or right in the message window next to the conversation in question. The game asks for confirmation first, to check that I really do want to ignore the player.

An ignored player moves into their own ignored players tab in the message window, so I always have an overview of who I've blocked. Ignoring can be undone at any time - I just find the player in this list and cancel the ignore, and their messages start being delivered normally again.

The cooperative chat has its own settings and channels

Besides private messages, the Cooperative also has a group chat with its own settings. In the chat settings I turn the individual options on and off, for example showing timestamps next to messages, and I have access to the member list straight from the chat window. The chat window can be locked so that it doesn't get in my way or close by accident, and the same button unlocks it again.

Cooperatives with a leadership also have a separate channel meant only for the leader and the deputies, which ordinary members can neither see nor write in. The channel name can also be renamed in the chat, which I mainly make use of when I want to split communication in a more active cooperative up by topic.