Duck Season Post Mortem

GrimSkald

I figured I'd post the good, the bad, and the ugly on Duck Season and invite others to do the same. Because I do think there was all three on this. So here's my take:

The good
- Introducing a new character without putting a further strain on the chances for the existing characters - Howard is not dilluting your chances of pulling much-needed covers, and getting or not getting him will not majorly impact your game. He's a trophy character only. This is (IMHO) a good thing, and is good for the long-term sustainability of the game.

- A brand new PVE. Hopefully they'll run it from time to time to give us a bit more variety. The PVE was amusing in many ways as well.

- Howard himself isn't completely useless (again, IMHO,) nor is he good enough that getting him is in any way required. Honestly, it would be much worse if he was awesome than if he was terrible. And hey, he's better than Cho.

- Giving us a bit more variety and excitement in general.

- His DDQ was challenging, but definitely doable even with a relatively low level (around 100) Howard.

The Bad
- Howard was given out at pretty much the standard 4* rate everywhere he was awarded. That's awful - it means that most players walk away with 1-4 covers of him unless they spent real money. They should have at least awarded him like Devil Dinosaur - this way the lucky ones got a few more covers, and the whales could even reasonably max him.

- The PVE featured a lot of the matches we have already seen, and doesn't really bring anything new to the table. First sub was just like half of the existing PVEs, second sub like about a third, last sub was like Venom Bomb. They either need to make more NPC characters or do more Villain PVEs so they can use Heroes.


The Ugly
- Howard's PVE had some truly, truly horrible matches. In particular the Kingpin, Hood, Muscle node was just plain awful. If I never see another Muscle again it would be too soon. Also, Symbiotes can get incredibly ugly if you don't have good tile conversion/destruction. In particular the Carriers get awful.

- The lack of any real Howard covers deserves to be in both categories. Most (even top end) players will have gotten 2 or 3 from PVE, 1 from PVP, and one from his DDQ - giving you a 1/1/2 or 1/1/3 Howard. The fact that he's only available for a limited time makes that just plain ugly.

All in all I think it was something neat that could have been handled a lot better. I wouldn't mind if they tried again with a new "trophy" character.

SnowcaTT

Good:

PVE was well written.

Any time 4* cover is rewarded to all (final node), that is great.

Bad:

With all the PVE tests, I can't remember if his was tested or the one you had him in was tested. They jumbled in my mind, and both versions of PVE are still bad honestly. Less clears and the new one might not be so bad.

Ugly:

The release rate for a "joke" character was pathetic. Dino was stupid, but exciting because you could draw him at a high rate. I was buying your daily tokens for Dino! The incredibly low token % and winning % (no different than a usual 4*?!?) was shameful.

The lack of communication for when this character will be used, and when it will return - hence we see lots of folks questioning if they should bother rostering a character they have in their queue!

revskip

Good -

Well written and fresh content is a big plus. Loved the writing.

Howard is fun to play with once you have at least one of each of his covers.

They designed the DDQ4 so that almost everyone who got at least 1 purple cover could get the last Howard cover.

Bad -

Recycling of the same 7 fights we have been doing in every other PVP. Dark Avengers, Symbiotes and Maggia all the time is boring. I'd love to see more content that has the villains as the featured characters, we have a lot more heroes than villains available and once and a while going up against the Avengers or X-Men or even the NYC heroes (Cage/Spidey/Punisher/IF etc) would be a nice change of pace.

Not knowing when and if Duck season will return. I really hope it will, Howard is one of my all time favorite comic characters and Webbed Wonder was way too well written to never be run again.

ClydeFrog76

revskip wrote:

They designed the DDQ4 so that almost everyone who got at least 1 purple cover could get the last Howard cover.

They did?

Vhailorx

Good: the whole season seems designed to reward everyone capable of scoring 1k in pvp with at least 1 cover of each color. Gimmick event had pretty good writing.

Bad: draw rates far too low, in general but especially for a gimmick character. Why is the only lesson than demiurge learned from the Year 1 Anniversary event: "people didn't like high draw rates and double iso!" I get that they lose money if the game is too "generous," but special events at least should be free taste to get us hooked with higher draw rates and generous rewards.

The meh: Howard's design is pretty meh. He just looks like a weak 4*. At least dino had tiny arms that were clearly designed as a joke.

Melevorn

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

revskip wrote:

They designed the DDQ4 so that almost everyone who got at least 1 purple cover could get the last Howard cover.

They did?

It took a couple of tries but I managed to kill 4Pun with a L70 0/0/2 duck.

Melevorn

Vhailorx wrote:

The meh: Howard's design is pretty meh. He just looks like a weak 4*.

Weak?! He's better than real 4*'s like Totally Awesome Hulk!

Does that make him a Mega-Awesome Duck (MAD)?

PeterGibbons316

I'm not happy about his DDQ4 running before other newly released characters, and rewarding another joke cover instead of an LT.

For a joke character I think he is pretty good, and if not for being G//B/P would actually be sorta usable.

MPQ_Daywalker

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

revskip wrote:

They designed the DDQ4 so that almost everyone who got at least 1 purple cover could get the last Howard cover.

They did?

They definitely did -- I got it on the 4th or 5th try (don't remember exactly; was just trying as I had time throughout the day) with my 0/0/1 Howard (I only had the one purple from the node in Webbed Wonder; I didn't try playing competitively for him and didn't have time to hit 1000 in his PVP this weekend). Since you really only had to deny green and collect purple, you could survive one of Punisher's hits, go invisible and wear him down.

GrimSkald

_Daywalker_ wrote:

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

revskip wrote:

They designed the DDQ4 so that almost everyone who got at least 1 purple cover could get the last Howard cover.

They did?

They definitely did -- I got it on the 4th or 5th try (don't remember exactly; was just trying as I had time throughout the day) with my 0/0/1 Howard (I only had the one purple from the node in Webbed Wonder; I didn't try playing competitively for him and didn't have time to hit 1000 in his PVP this weekend). Since you really only had to deny green and collect purple, you could survive one of Punisher's hits, go invisible and wear him down.

Yeah, I had real trouble with him getting green, me not getting purple, and him matching my invisibility tiles. I think I got it the 4th try with my 0/0/3 Howard. I wouldn't call it easy, but it was very possible.

snlf25

I ended up with a Howard that is 1/0/2

got mine from The Hunt (top 100) the final Webbed Wonder Survival node and from his 4* DDQ

beat the DDQ on my second try because I forgot about Frank's green

the DDQ was a hell of a lot of fun and confirmed what I though about Howard from the beginning, he is the perfect troll character and is next to unkillable if you let him get purple out and don't have an AOE attack

this makes me feel worse about how few covers I got

webbed wonder was very exceptionally well written

everything else about webbed wonder was complete a complete trash fire to the point of being an insult to the game, the character and the players

the difficulty was stupid ****

same old tired combo of goons and tired **** dark avengers. my god vomit. waste of perfect opportunity to give something new to a base that is screaming for the dark avengers to be **** retired already for **** sake

A three cover Howard is completely expendable and I'm not busting my **** to collect all of them any more. Screw it. I don't need more 4*s to fight the same tired **** Dark Avengers that should be **** retired already as mentioned above. So if Duck Season is not rerun soon or if the devs don't start talking about when it will be rerun, he will be on the chopping block right after the biggest disgrace in the game, dude brolk.

duck season perfectly illustrated the tight assed stingy attitude of the devs. howard should have been special, because he is special in that you can only bag him in season. there should have been 50pnt daily tokens, there should have been 20-50 player lightning rounds, there should have been more prizes and double iso on everything. the difficulty should have been scaled way down. you know, all the cool stuff you guys did with devil dino. everybody who wanted to put in the time should have been able to pull in 7 or 8 covers. wasted opportunity. instead you created false scarcity to make whales buy 40 packs, not good and it did not go unnoticed. your player base is not stupid.

Linkster79

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

revskip wrote:

They designed the DDQ4 so that almost everyone who got at least 1 purple cover could get the last Howard cover.

They did?

That's what I was thinking. 15 attempts and I gave up on trying to stop Punisher collecting green while I did just match damage.

chamber44

Linkster79 wrote:

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

revskip wrote:

They designed the DDQ4 so that almost everyone who got at least 1 purple cover could get the last Howard cover.

They did?

That's what I was thinking. 15 attempts and I gave up on trying to stop Punisher collecting green while I did just match damage.

same. i burned through all my boosts and still wasn't even really close.