How will you remember Duck Season?

SnowcaTT

It's not nearly done - but how will you remember Howard the Duck's introduction?

I remember the other special joke character (Devil Dino) very fondly. High drop rates! Presents dropping everywhere! What a fun event [the first time]!

Howard:
Same 'ol 4* introduction, with low % that win him from the PVE (and lower than SL drop rate)
New PVE! With -one- Duck in a vault, another low %.
Soon will be same 'ol PVP? (hoping higher drop rates, but not getting that hope high).
No extra tokens or rewards anywhere.
We'll get a Duck as a PVE reward I guess...at the end of the PVE, after you haven't been able to run a bunch of it.

Nope, how I'll remember Howard:

THIS IS THE CHARACTER THAT REMOVED GETTING ALL REWARDS AT ONCE IN WAVE NODES.

Wish I'd never seen you, Howard. Don't know how they can possibly turn this joke character "special event" around at this point, honestly.

Quebbster

I don't get it.
Will I get it when I start playing Webbed Wonder?

SnowcaTT

Quebbster wrote:

I don't get it.
Will I get it when I start playing Webbed Wonder?

Yeah, the Wave Nodes no longer give out all rewards. There are two of them, including the final one - you may be forced into running that wave seven times to get the CP even if you aren't trying for progressions.

Some people enjoy -not- grinding all the nodes. I -loved- wave nodes that give all rewards.

Also the Duck test (opening) node includes spiderman - many of your purple tiles that would count for Howard Invisibility are already shield tiles. And the enemy AI? Gamma Siphon, of course. You didn't -really- want to see what Howard could do, did you?

OneLastGambit

Much as I do enjoy your posts normally snowcatt you're slightly in error with your comparison.

Dd wasn't a special event just for him, it was anniversary. All the goody madness was in celebration of that, not the joke character.

LordXberk

SnowcaTT wrote:

Quebbster wrote:

I don't get it.
Will I get it when I start playing Webbed Wonder?

Yeah, the Wave Nodes no longer give out all rewards. There are two of them, including the final one - you may be forced into running that wave seven times to get the CP even if you aren't trying for progressions.

Some people enjoy -not- grinding all the nodes. I -loved- wave nodes that give all rewards.

Also the Duck test (opening) node includes spiderman - many of your purple tiles that would count for Howard Invisibility are already shield tiles. And the enemy AI? Gamma Siphon, of course. You didn't -really- want to see what Howard could do, did you?

Do you think they specifically designed that opening node to be terrible or are they just oblivious? You'd think that they'd want to sell more tokens and that allowing players to actually use Howard to his fullest potential would be a way to do that. But, maybe I'm giving too much credit.

And, regardless of the DD and anniversary v. Howard comparison, I understand that it's not the anniversary; however, why have him be limited if you can't win more of him during 'Duck Season?' Why not just say he's limited and it's a cash grab (tokens and roster spot for unusable character) and not promote this whole 'season' thing? I don't get it.

SnowcaTT

OneLastGambit wrote:

Much as I do enjoy your posts normally snowcatt you're slightly in error with your comparison.

Dd wasn't a special event just for him, it was anniversary. All the goody madness was in celebration of that, not the joke character.

But then why a special "Duck Season" here? Maybe I just don't get it. I don't know why there is a "special" event for a "special" (not in packs) character, that doesn't feel special in any way.

I saved HP in hopes that it would be good for something here...I guess it will be good for rostering a character I'll never again use?

Xenoberyll

Business as usual but with a label on it.

Esheris

If Howard would have been announced as a typical 4* release I would have been happy to know I would eventually get him fully covered.

But he was announced as a special character with a special event, I think people (myself included) had higher expectations for this character release.

Devs, maybe don't hype up something if it's not worth it. But this whole event isn't over, hopefully you guys will surprise us.

GrumpySmurf1002

How will I remember it? I'm going to try darn hard to forget it.

optimus2861

As soon as I saw the "0.2%" listed on the odds for the Hunt token to draw Howard, I knew exactly how I'd remember Duck Season:

Typical Demiurge tight-fistedness and obliviousness to player fun at work.

I haven't started Webbed Wonder yet. I don't much care. I'm not wasting 1000 HP on a roster slot for a joke character who won't be available for long if they're not going to give out his covers like candy. I've already got, what, 7 or 8 single-cover 4* on my roster?

They could actually have made this fun. Give everyone one free roster slot, and make a regular, 2* version of Howard to go alongside his 4* version. Same powers, toned down, or a slightly different power set. Who cares, really. Give out the 2* version like candy, increase the drop rates on him from all tokens, so that everyone, new and old, would very likely have 13+ covers of him available by the time Duck Season is over (maybe even double ISO income during Duck Season so we could level him???). The hard-core grinders could go after the 4* version while the casuals & newbies could play with the 2*. Even if 2* Howard got yanked from rotation afterward, it wouldn't matter, everyone playing would have him.

But, y'know, apparently players can't just have fun in this game with a silly character. Everything's gotta be a griiiiiiiiind!

Xenoberyll

Esheris wrote:

But this whole event isn't over, hopefully you guys will surprise us.

This is a little spark of hope yet, but seeing that there'll be a Clash of the Titans with Howard before the last event were you can get him at increased chances...i guess you can count me a sceptic.

TxMoose

if this is true of the wave nodes going forward, i'll have little reason to play EotS. especially if we end up with the 'new' pve setup. man that sucks. ROI on that would just plummet. give me some DA nodes any time (especially with a boosted like 4thor).

CaptainFreaky

I will remember Duck Season as the final proof that the Dev's have checked out on this game & really don't care to make it great anymore.
Maybe they are soooooo busy working on something else (CA:CW perhaps) that they just threw this together - but if that's the case, they could have moved Duck Season out till after the big movie event. No, in the face of ZERO feedback to what the community is saying about Duck Season, I can only presume that Demiurge doesn't really care about making meaningful improvements to the game other than finding new ways to suck more cash out of the whales.

Even removing the 20 ISO consolation in PVE that we all rejoiced over has to be taken in the context of what Demiurge then rolled out in terms of the new PVE on EOTS. It's clear that they only removed the 20 ISO booby prize because they wanted to make a change to encourage people to grind even more (6x per node) to use more resources and force more purchases. They could have removed 20 ISO ages ago (don't give me the "oh it's hard to code" excuse"), but CONVENIENTLY removed it only before trying out changes to PVE format and scaling.

Sorry that last bit was OT, but to the OP question, I'll remember what could have been a quick fun event before the main course of Civil War as being over-hyped, under-delivering, and just downright discouraging and not awesome at all.

madsalad

I'll remember Duck Season as WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHBBIT Season.

Azoic

You want a 2* version of this 4* character? He is already weak and pathetic as is...I think they mislabeled him anyways. The devs clearly have no idea how to design characters and balance...how you can have characters such as Jean, RH, HB, etc...and then Cho, SL, IW, etc.

I play another mobile game, and they are GREAT at reading the forums, and actually buffing the weaker, unused characters, and actually making them useful! While somehow keeping releasing new characters as well. D3? Heck with balance and thinking about these characters as they are rolled out. As long as the whales still gobble them up, no reason to change.

TheHueyFreeman

How will you remember Duck Season?

You mean rabbit season?

Linkster79

OneLastGambit wrote:

Much as I do enjoy your posts normally snowcatt you're slightly in error with your comparison.

Dd wasn't a special event just for him, it was anniversary. All the goody madness was in celebration of that, not the joke character.

Remember how the latest anniversary went down? Yeah that wasn't even half as good as the first one. Like others have said already, if this is a limited time character then why not give us a fighting chance at getting lots of covers without having to break the bank? What were devil Dinosaur drop percentages from tokens? Somewhere in the region of 10% if I recall, 0.2% even from 40 packs really is just a very bad very late April Fools joke. Why go to all the hassle of a special mini season and hype it up for another standard release?

I will remember this as another event let down by poor implementation, just like all other recent events.

tanis3303

I'll remember it as even further proof that simply because of the Marvel license on this game, the development team can shovel any load of kitty at their players that they want, and they will swallow it up and keep playing. Does this suck? Sure. Are we all still playing? You betcha. At the end of the day, the only feedback that's going to make a lick of difference to them is if enough people stop playing, but they have everyone too hooked on the game and it's release schedule (which truly is absurd if you really give it some thought) to stop playing.

notamutant

tanis3303 wrote:

I'll remember it as even further proof that simply because of the Marvel license on this game, the development team can shovel any load of kitty at their players that they want, and they will swallow it up and keep playing. Does this suck? Sure. Are we all still playing? You betcha. At the end of the day, the only feedback that's going to make a lick of difference to them is if enough people stop playing, but they have everyone too hooked on the game and it's release schedule (which truly is absurd if you really give it some thought) to stop playing.

The problem with the whole "The only way we can get them to stop making bad design decisions is to quit" is that it gives the developers too much credit. It assumes they would connect the never-ending grind and poor rewards as the reason for players quitting, not something else. They clearly think that more grind equals higher player retention based on past game design decisions. And since they seem to ignore the forum lately, I don't know what they are using to base their decisions on except for straight up statistics, which doesn't really tell the story. Stats might show that tons of people played an event and that therefore it was successful, when the reality is people hated the event and felt like they had to do it in order to get some reward (latest EoTS test). I think the only thing that would really make a difference is if all the big buyers got together and agreed on a boycott until some area was fixed in the game.

SuperRecoome

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks the "Event" isn't worth it.

I've been playing since the game released on steam, and still have no usable 4 stars. Granted, I'm casual, but years later and even casual players should have made some progress into the endgame, any other casual game does that after a year of playing. I'm only missing Spider Gwen for 4 star characters, but most are 1-2 covers. The only 4 stars I have with more than that are IW, Xforce, Thoress, and Fury, the oldest ones. New character releases are met with complete apathy for me, because I'll never see them usable since 3 stars are no longer being released. I barely even play. There's Zero incentive for me to try for Howard as I don't have the roster or time to or money to get him fully covered at in a limited time at normal 4 star rates. I'm glad he's limited and won't be required after duck season ends because he will never be covered. I'm skipping the entire event. Something needs to change in the game to keep me as a player, that's for sure.

Keegan

I'll remember some forumites huffing about how useless Howard looked on spec, how sick they are of useless characters, how they were going to refuse to participate or roster Howard.

Then I'll remember the same people participating but letting everyone know just how unhappy they were about it, all the while complaining about not getting enough free Howard covers handed to them