Emergent groupthink, and you can too.
The Imperious Lounge
Sup, squids.The Imperious Lounge
The Lounge, dearth though the original thread may be, has had a great deal of success in its first few months of operation. We were one of the groups to start exploring the competitive metagame. We were able to make sense of the data mined from the game, the results (soon to be updated with 2.0.0 data) of which you can find here. We were able to form a solid competitive squad that has had a decent amount of success in spite of limited activity. And now, we're expanding.
What is the Lounge?
The Imperious Lounge is a large, free-form Skype (maybe Discord) group with the express intent of progressing the meta, educating the community, and setting a high standard of respect, skill, and knowledge. While it shares its name with Imperious (mainly for historical reasons), it is a group where anyone from any team (or no team at all) is welcome, provided they meet our requirements.
What's in it for me?
We provide the following:
- A place to discuss the metagame with other top players;
- A place to discuss potential tournament rulesets and structures with TOs, top players, and team leaders;
- A place to find scrims against top teams;
- A place to organise pickup matches or ranked squads;
- A place to scout new talent for your team, or to show your skills to top teams;
- A place to discuss the game's mechanics with other data hounds--anything from techniques to raw weapon data;
- All in a relaxed atmosphere.
What's the catch?
We do have some relatively strict requirements.
Exceptions will be made for all requirements in the cases of TOs, data miners, and team managers.
- A minimum rank of A+ 50, attained entirely through solo matchmaking (i.e. not squads), OR extensive competitive experience in other FPS/TPS games.
- We initially had a much more relaxed restriction on the skill level of players joining the lounge for a variety of reasons, the most prominent of which being that we wanted to help educate players directly. What we found was that being part of the lounge bred a certain amount of complacency due to the fact that our discussions made people think they understood the game better than they actually did, which in fact stunted their improvement rather than hastening it. Instead, we will be running a separate project that will be announced once the reopened Lounge stabilises.
- Also, anyone who got boosted to A+ by some buddies after being stuck in the Bs: not fukken likely m8
- At least 8 hours of play per week across no fewer than 3 days.
- A problem we currently have in the Lounge is that many players who originally joined on tight work/school schedules started falling behind the discussions and eventually stopped participating. We'd like to avoid this, because it just becomes awkward for all parties involved. And really, 8 hours a week is not that much of a time investment for the kinds of people we're looking for anyway.
- A respectful attitude, both toward the game and other players.
- This hasn't changed and never will. We do not tolerate drama, bickering, or disrespectful attitudes in the Lounge. This means that all teams in the Lounge will respect each other, all players will respect the TOs (and vice versa), and so on. Disagreements and disputes will be settled maturely, without exception.
- A stable internet connection, a decent microphone, and the ability to communicate with other players via Teamspeak/Discord/etc.
- This is mainly directed at people wishing to find a team via the Lounge or participate in pickup games, but we highly recommend that anyone who is joining to actually play Splatoon with the group has voice comm facilities. If you're just a good player wanting to get in on the meta discussions and play a couple ranked squads every now and then, we don't mind if you don't mic for that.
A Skype account.not anymore lol!1- we discord now
- An intent to contribute. In other words, no fanboying.
- If you're joining, it's to contribute in some way. Wanting to join the Lounge just because your favourite player is in it is going to just annoy everyone involved. That really would result in groupthink.
How do I join?
Fill out this form. It'll probably take me a few days to get to you (since I'm the one processing all the applications and I don't have a great deal of time right now), but be patient. If I like the look of your answers, I'll drop you in. There may or may not be some fanfare involved. Confetti, party favours, maybe a disco ball. Then you can jump straight in to whatever's happening.
Please understand that this is intended to be a relatively exclusive group. If your application is rejected, please don't take it personally; I will explain why I rejected your application in private. You are able to update your application as many times as you like, but note that spamming this is a great way to get blacklisted.
If you have submitted an application to the Lounge group prior to this post, there's no need to submit an application via the form above; I will PM you all with my contact details, and we can discuss your joining from there.
Isn't this really elitist?
Yes. That's the point. Seriously, it's not that I hate people who aren't S rank or something, it's just that I want things to be as smooth as possible. The group already has 50 members at the time of writing (give or take), and it's only going to grow from there. While I'm not discounting the possibility that a B rank player might have some insight on the game that we lack, I am suggesting that it's highly unlikely and probably not worth the effort.
What about groupthink?
What about it? What, you think that 100 opinionated S/S+ players in the same chat room are all going to just happily agree on everything?
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