LFG & Groups
The looking-for-group system is the heart of the bot. Members create groups, the bot broadcasts them to the right channels, and compatible players are matched and joined together.
Groups
A group is tied to a game and a set of chosen filters. Members create one with the /lfg command (or its full name, /create-group) in any text channel, or with the Create Group button in a configured LFG channel. At any moment a group is in one of these states:
- Searching — actively looking for more players. The bot shows a magnifying-glass indicator and posts a live LFG message.
- Paused — temporarily not looking, either by hand or by auto-pause.
- Full — the group hit its player limit and locks; broadcasting stops.
While a group is searching, the bot posts and continually refreshes an LFG message in the relevant channel describing the group — game, filters, current members, and a one-click join link — alongside a control panel.
The control panel
Members drive the group with buttons:
- Start LFG / Pause — toggle searching on and off
- Get invite — grab an invite link to the group's voice channel
- LFG ping — ping the game's role for this group (if enabled)
- Schedule — turn this into a scheduled session
- Player settings — set your own attributes (e.g. your rank)
- Mute suggestions — stop recommendation nudges
Thread-only groups that have been idle for 24 hours are finished automatically, since they have no voice channel emptying to close them.
Auto-pause: how a search ends on its own
A search doesn't run forever. Most games are played in sessions — a squad that filled up half an hour ago is in a match, and nobody tabs out to press Pause — so a search left running mostly advertises a group that stopped looking. Rather than guess, the bot asks first and only pauses if nobody answers:
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| 50 minutes into the search | "Still looking for players?" is posted in the group, mentioning the owner, and sent to the owner as a DM. Both carry Keep Searching and Stop Searching. |
| 60 minutes | If nobody answered, the search pauses. A notice goes in the group channel with a Start Search button to resume. |
| 30 minutes after pausing | If the group is down to a single member, it is finished and cleaned up. |
A few things worth knowing:
- Keep Searching buys another full window — another 60 minutes, with the check-in again 10 minutes before the end. The group's LFG post is not re-posted and no ping is sent: the card, pings and invites already went out, so answering costs your channel nothing.
- The panel shows the deadline. While a group is searching, its control panel carries the time the search will auto-pause, so nobody has to count from memory.
- Answering is the only test that works. Presence can't stand in for it — a player set to invisible reads as offline, and people self-deafen while they wait.
- Full and already-paused groups are never asked. There is nothing to ask about: a full group locks instead, and a paused one has already stopped.
- Groups with two or more members are not auto-finished. They close naturally when everyone leaves; only a solo group is cleaned up after the pause.
- Voice and thread groups follow the same clock. A voice group whose room empties is closed within seconds by the usual cleanup, long before any of this — the check-in is for the owner who is still connected but has walked away, and for thread groups, which have no room to empty.
The check-in DM can be muted per game and server, with the mute button on the DM itself. Muting it keeps the post in the group channel, which is still waiting when you come back. See Discovery & notifications.
Self-hosting
The timings above are the shipped defaults — DEFAULT_SEARCHING_TIMEOUT (60), SEARCH_CHECK_IN_MINUTES (10, counted inside that window, not added to it) and AUTO_FINISH_AFTER_PAUSE_MINUTES (30) in the PM2 config.
Reserved slots
A group owner can hold blank slots for friends so randoms don't fill them — ➕ Reserve a slot / ➖ Free a reserved slot in the Search Settings dropdown.
- Reserved slots count as filled: they reduce open capacity, block joins, and lower the voice channel's user limit.
- Filling the last free slot flips the group to full (🔒) and stops the search; Start Search is refused while it's full by reservation.
- The public post and panel show a
🔒 N reserved slot(s)line and the adjusted(x/y)count. - Lowering Group Size clamps the reserved count so capacity can't go negative.
Staying visible (auto-bump)
If a group's LFG message scrolls too far down a busy channel, the bot automatically re-posts it so it stays visible.
Matchmaking
When a group broadcasts, the bot doesn't just dump it everywhere. It:
- Routes to the most relevant channel(s) by scoring each LFG channel against the group's filters, so posts land where compatible players are looking.
- Recommends compatible players and groups to each other, matching rank-style filters within a tolerance so near-equal players still pair.
The result: members mostly see groups that actually fit what they want to play — right mode, platform, and rank band — instead of scrolling past irrelevant posts.
Open to Play (solo availability)
A player who isn't in a group yet can mark themselves Open to Play for a game — with the /open-to-play command in any text channel, or with the Open to Play button in a configured LFG channel. Channels for something other than a game (Just Chatting, a Custom Activity such as "Movie Night") call it Open to Join. The bot tracks available players and, when two or more compatible solo players exist, DMs each of them a "group up" card showing who they can team with and a one-click way into a voice channel.
- Availability expires automatically (4 hours in production).
- It clears the moment the player joins a voice channel.
This means solo players don't have to sit in an empty channel hoping — the bot proactively pairs them up.