I'm also picking up a ton of duds as well over real crates. I personally don't care to pick up duds either and rather them all just be real crates. If I wanted to use the crates as decoration, we could have just kept them unopened. I've done that with past crates: kept some opened and some unopened for building and anyone else can choose to do that too with their crates without the need of duds in the game.
I'd rather not pick up 10-15 crates in the courtyard thinking they are normal since it doesn't tell you when you pick them up, which would be nice without having to check, and only have 4 real ones. It's almost like false hope or a gamble if you pick up a good one or bad one. If it's just to keep us busy and "give us something to do" well, I'd rather use my time doing something else on another screen waiting for crates to spawn a min or two longer if it means I will for sure pick up a real one.
Odds already were changed because it was too easy, spawn rate adjusted several times, mishaps with items, still have an empty pin from crates, new items being added too, and also duds? The in-game/tweet said that non-duds rares *will* be a lot higher than duds -shrugs- Not seeing that. It's already enough work to crate all day long or whenever you have time, and with my luck I will have to crate all month long just to get one rare especially with the terrible spawn rates we had the last day or two/dc'ing that got wasted and I'm sure will get adjusted throughout the month more for it to be necessary to add the duds. Just fix it and leave it alone lol. I'd have at least less duds but preferably none at all and have a bit more satisfaction knowing that i'm on for hours and every crate I pick up is a good one, even if it means it'll more than likely be a pin or furni item I have a million of already but hey, those pins are good for pin trading events, giving them away to newbies, etc so I'm not worried about that. Some way to distinguish between the good and bad ones wouldn't be so bad either as an option so we could pass on it if we wanted to so it still requires paying attention to the screen like zombies/slaves that the games wants us to be and/or have the crates when opened become decoration with an empty/opened and/or rotatable version with candy and do away with duds entirely. I wouldn't mind if they brought back being able to open the crates in public rooms again as well if they're going to just disappear anyways if empty/decor crates after opened aren't an option. Opened/closed crates are great fillers and decor for room building.
Marvel crates were kinda slow compared to crates in the past (which I'm still missing 1k opened crates from marvel month @ staff) and I'd much rather have that than the duds right now because at least I know I'm definitely making progress with every pick up, and not with 1/5 being real crates.