Dead Nation PSN game by Housemarque

I think it is actually a kills to player ratio. A guy from Housemarque discussed it a little on the Playstation Nation podcast one or two weeks ago. He doesn't disclose the full details on purpose if I remember correctly, but did mention that was its primary element if I remember correctly.
 
That can't be it, because the nation rating is based on clearing out the virus cycles, and that's dependent on killing a number of zombies which can't be dependent on the number of players from that country as that'd affect the current cycle %age when new players join (of at 50% with one precruit, and another recrutir joins, the %age would drop to 25%), and would mean those nations with only 1 player would only need to kill some thousands of zombies to move to the next cycle.

There has to be some national population factor involved along with players, so maybe it's zombies killed per unit national population, irrespective of how many from that nation play the game, or something. But then the UK ratio of kills to population is higher than the US, so that doesn't work.

:???:

Most importabtly though, what's the point? What is the reward for advancing the game? I'm nearing the end of my solo playthrough. I'll probably play again online once voice-chat is enabled, maybe aiming for the Platinum, although I've no idea how to get all the loot. But other than that, I can't see much point in playing the game again as it's be done. I thought the metagame would add some larger goals, but at the moment it's meaningless. And it's Housemarque's interests to communicate the point of it, otherwise others like me will just not be playing and so not find out nor contribute.
 
Just completed solo on Normal difficulty, realising the Shocker is the key to success. But looking at these rankings, there's no obvious logic.

Code: 
    Country : Population : Recruits : Zombies killed : zombie/popn : zombie/recruits : virus cycle
1.  Finland :  5.4M      :  1283    :  17.7M         : 3.3         :  13,800         : 2 (2.87%)
2.  USA     :  310M      : 20000    : 220.1M         : 0.71        :  11,005         : 2 (2.76%)
10. Sweden  :  9.3M      :  1063    :   9.5M         : 1.02        :   8,936         : 1 (68.15%)
11. UK      :   62M      :  5000    :  58.0M         : 0.93        :  11,600         : 1 (65.32%)
12. Austrl  :   22M      :  1572    :  10.7M         : 0.48        :   6,806         : 1 (60.79%)

It's clearly not sorted by zombie kill ratios.
 
I was just thinking about this game today, because I've been playing Castle Crashers and that has clear-as-day voice-chat. There's been no patch for this yet.
 
And checkpoint saves! Glad I managed to not play ... now however to find someone to play with ...
 
Having completed it, I'm not sure of the value of this. The metagame doesn't really exist other than being some ever-increasing numbers, so other than difficulty levels the experience is nothing new. The ability to copy saves is important by its prior absence - I could have aimed for platinum with my friend, but he couldn't copy off his save when his PS3 died and so lost enthusiasm to do it all again. Can't help but feel the boat has sailed for me with this game.
 
Yeah, that was basically my point! So what I'm sure they hope to do with this is reach a new audience that hasn't played it yet, as well as maybe renege on some promises.

However, one thing I am curious about is if the reason that it took so long is because they have made it so that other developers can reuse the code easily. Remember that Housemarque did a lot of this pioneering stuff for Super Stardust both on PS3 (which debuted two things, one of them trophies, forgot the other?) and on PSP too (online leaderboards for instance, DLC addons as well?).
 
It has been a long wait for what seems a trivial update. And no mention of what the meta-game is supposed ot be about. The whole thing seems...odd.
 
From the facebook page http://www.facebook.com/DeadNation/posts/172324986149161
The Voice Chat patch is live!

The new features include:
* Online co-op voice chat
* Checkpoint save
* Brightness calibration screen
* Jack and Scarlett now have their own laser sight colors
* You can now also buy a laser sight for your SMG, Shotgun, or Blade Cannon
* Detailed statistics menu
* Bullets can no longer hit cars beyond the screen
* Game saves can now be copied
Click to expand...
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Having completed it, I'm not sure of the value of this. The metagame doesn't really exist other than being some ever-increasing numbers, so other than difficulty levels the experience is nothing new. The ability to copy saves is important by its prior absence - I could have aimed for platinum with my friend, but he couldn't copy off his save when his PS3 died and so lost enthusiasm to do it all again. Can't help but feel the boat has sailed for me with this game.
Click to expand...

Even if you only play it once, I do think it's still decent value for money. The game is quite long for a downloadable title. Probably took me 6+ hours to finish on normal (loving every minute of it too). That's about an hour less than Dante's Inferno or about the same lenght as your average shooter campaign. If Guerilla, Epic, Insomniac and Activision sold me their shooter campaigns without the mp for that kind of money (or even twice as much), I'd certainly own about 10 times as many shooters as I do now.
 
I played it last night, after Castle Crashers on Extreme proved too extreme and plain not fun. Voice chat makes a big difference, as when can discuss tactics like the old one-player-edging-out-of-the-safe-zone-to-get-loot-and-then-go-back-and-buy-stuff manouevre, or who's going to upgrade which weapons for which tasks. Some other updates like bullets not going off screen to hit cars makes finding money a little easier. The laser sights are much improved for visibility. The weapon selection mechanics is still pants though, and I can see that leading to deaths in harder modes. There's also no mention of a resuscitation system for down players, which is a problem. Doing nothing for ten minutes while your ally cautiously works their way to the exit isn't fun.

Also the checkpoint save system is only good for solo play, not online. Which isn't a huge problem as long as you and budski set aside an hour or whatever for a level.

An interesting fact is voice chat doesn't work with background music enabled. Is this an issue of resources of a bug, and that's what caused the voice chat ommission in the first place? I would like to see more content and stuff hpapening though. The leaderboard is still stupid, with Japan being the second best nation with the second worst zombie kill rate. If nothing is explained, it makes it irrelevant. So what if the UK is on cycle 12? Who cares how far we are towards cycle 13? They put in that bit of code for no reason, which is just silly.

It looks like maybe 100k sales worldwide going by recruits, which isn't bad, but Housemarque could have reached a lot more with a few design changes.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
The leaderboard is still stupid, with Japan being the second best nation with the second worst zombie kill rate. If nothing is explained, it makes it irrelevant. So what if the UK is on cycle 12? Who cares how far we are towards cycle 13? They put in that bit of code for no reason, which is just silly.
Click to expand...

It could be a relative rank, where it depends on the number of "recruits" ie they divide kills/score by number of recruits?

Japan and Norway got about the same number of kills 9M+, but Norway got about double the amount of "recruits" and Jppan is #2 and Norway #25
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Not relative rank, because the UK scores higher in kills per player than the US. Also scores higher in terms of percentage of the population who are recruits.

I see no explanation to any of it, and no reason either as this points don't do anything! On the upside, online with voice chat is proving fun.
 
As far as I can tell the ranking is done as a function of the countries population. Eventually every country will get to one hundred cycles, effectively meaning that everyone in the country is either dead or deader...
 
Has anyone else tried the new DLC? I gave it a blast last night and thought it was good fun. Choosing which path to take so that you are strategically placed to continue and not die within seconds of setting out was an interesting challenge.
 
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